Wings of a Bird

The Guts to Keep Going - NPR essay by Amy Lyles Wilson
I believe in old women who learn new tricks — gutsy, wrinkled broads who eat alone in restaurants and pump their own gas.
When my father died six years ago, my mother, then 79, had already done quite a lot. She had moved from her hometown in Mississippi to work in the big city even though many of her generation stayed put. She had raised three daughters, chaired PTAs, volunteered for a host of causes and nursed her husband through heart surgery. Along the way, she lost a breast and part of her colon to cancer.
What she had not done before Daddy's death, however, was pump her own gas.
...
As we drove off, Mother told me about her old friend Betty Ann whose husband Carl had died recently. It seems Betty Ann got in the passenger seat of their new Buick and waited a full three minutes for Carl to appear behind the wheel before finally hauling herself to the other side of the car and driving downtown. Telling me this story, my mother was crying just a bit. She said, "I guess you do what you have to do." ...

Labels: grief