Pearl's Day

July 17th is always a tough day for me. I woke up that morning in 1988, my father yelling up the stairs that something was wrong and I needed to come to his bedroom to help my Mom.

She was not lucid, laying on the bed with her feet on the ground and wanted "water, water, water," she said. I gave her a glass of clean water, but she insisted on drinking Henri's (Dad's) water off his night table. I then told her we were taking her to the hospital and the last words she said to me were, "when when when?"

We took her to Central Baptist Hospital, where she walked in the door, and collapsed. We never spoke to her again after that because she was intubated, and she was in the process of dying.

Over the next few hours, my father asked me to sing Country Roads to Mom, and I did somehow. Now every time I hear Country Roads, I think of that moment. My voice didn't crack, I hit every note, and I had all brothers and sisters standing around me staring at me and wondering what was going to happen next.

At midnight that night, she passed  away in septic shock,  making it till Sunday, which I guess was the day she was waiting for. We had been thinking Addison would be in town at any moment, the Navy brought him home for his mom's death, but he arrived from London a few hours after she left this life.

This is a sad story, and it doesn't get any happier. A few days after Mom was buried, my nephew Rubin spent the night, and was awake all night with a headache that made him throw up. I asked him if he had told his doctor that he was having such headaches and since he was going to a doctor's appointment that day, he said he would.

That caused an MRI to happen, which showed a baseball-sized medulloblastoma on the back of his head. In the end, I went with Rubin to St Jude in Memphis, to be with him while he took his radiation treatment.

Many jokes were told along the way and Rubin and I became good friends, he is now over six feet tall, married, graduated from high school and got a scholarship to college, and although he has had a slight stroke, he is in his forties now, and he's a big smart ass like every other Thomas.

You ... have a sister!

I am simply recording my thoughts right now because I am frantic. The state has been on lockdown since January, was released from lockdown July 1st, and everybody has been acting like they are insane ever since that happened.

The cases are increasing in our state, the governor is being stalked and people are going onto his porch and knocking on his windows, the attorney general has invited folks to do the same to him through his decisions by asking a Boone  Circuit Judge to void every one of the governor's edicts.

Because of our governor and his instructions and advice, I am still alive at 65, overweight, with high blood pressure and living in a building full of non-compliant people.

Thank you, and for your help!
God bless,
Kimmy