The Providence Hospice team met with me at the nursing home yesterday and went over the services they perform for the patient and the patient's family. There was a nurse, a social worker, and a chaplain, all Baptists, so I'm sure Mother is in good hands. She was frowning and moaning the whole time I was with her, which told me she was in more pain than the day before when she wasn't frowning. Pain medication will be applied by a patch, since she is not always cooperative in taking pills. There were a dozen or more forms to sign authorizing them to treat, to bill Medicare and Medicaid, a do not resuscitate order, etc. They asked me to bring her portable CD player back with some of her favorite music to play and agreed to ask the staff to keep the TV noise (something she used to complain about) to a minimum, since her roommate is not in the room most of the time.



When I told the chaplain that her idea of heaven looks a lot like Walnut Grove, he laughed and said, "I hope there's more to it than that. I'm from Morton and I never thought there was anything heavenly about it or Walnut Grove." (Morton and Walnut Grove are in the same neck of the woods, for you non-Mississippians.) Three Dog Night said, "Heaven is in your mind." They may be right. I know Mother would be deliriously happy to find a little white frame house like the one she grew up in with her mother and father and husband there to welcome her home.

My earliest memory is from this house. I was playing on the bed in the back bedroom and Papaw gave me a bottle of Coca-Cola. I lay down and turned it up to drink as though it had a nipple. Coke went everywhere, of course, choking me and soaking the bedding, which brought Deedo running from the next room to rescue the baby and to scold her careless husband, "Irvin, are you trying to drown the baby!" My recall of the incident has always been vivid. I've been told it happened when they were keeping me while Mother was at Baptist Hospital in Jackson having Betsy, so I was 15 months old.

Another clear memory I have is the night my parents came home with my newborn brother Paul. We lived in Noxapator in the Baptist parsonage. It was a very stormy night and the wind had blown open the gate to the barnyard allowing our milk cow Cherry to wander out and get lost. Papaw had been out in the driving rain trying to find her, but didn't. The power went out, so when Mom and Dad came in with the new baby, we couldn't see him very well in the candlelight. Later, Papaw and Daddy went back out with a lantern to continue the search for the lost cow. That baby is 57 years old today. Happy birthday, Brother!