Buck was the last of her children to leave the nest.
He had dropped out of school to find a job, but he had recently decided to
return there when he couldn’t find anything.
2 Hence, although Mittie no longer had as many mouths
to feed, she could also no longer rely on the additional income which her
children had contributed during their time in the household. Sure, Pearl and
Murph helped out when they could, and Dick helped some now and then since his
divorce from Annie. Even so, Mittie struggled to pay her bills.
3 She continued to sew and take in laundry and
boarders to help pay the bills, but there never seemed to be enough to pay for
everything. In fact, much of the food she had consumed over the last several
months had been purchased on credit at the local grocery store. She would pay
her bill down when she got a little money, but Mittie never quite managed to
entirely eliminate her debt.
4 To complicate matters, she often suffered severe and
debilitating chest pains. She was tired all of the time now and often didn’t
seem to have the strength to do the things which she had been doing all of her
life.
5 “Mama, are you ok?” Pearl asked. “You look as white
as a sheet.” “I’m just tired and give out all of the time,” she replied. “Maybe
you should see the doctor?” her daughter suggested. “Don’t know what good that
would do, and I can’t afford it anyway!” Mittie declared.
6 Pearl, however, was just about as stubborn as her
mother and made an appointment for her. “I made an appointment for you with
Doctor Maples for tomorrow morning,” she told her. “Murph and I will take you,”
she continued before her mother could protest.
7 When the doctor had finished, he motioned for Pearl
to join her mother in the examination room. “Miss Miller, your heart is enlarged,
and it is having trouble pumping your blood through your body. We call it
congestive heart failure,” he explained.
8 “What can we do for that?” Pearl asked. “She’s going
to have to start taking it easier, and we’ll put her on digitalis – that will
help,” Dr. Maples replied.
9 “From what your mother just told me, I suspect she
has already had a number of heart attacks,” he continued. “So, let me say
again, you must start taking it easy around the house,” he reiterated as he
looked directly at his patient.
10 On the way back to Merrimack, Mittie sat quietly
with her hands folded in her lap and looked out the car window. “Have you heard
from Doodle lately?” Pearl asked. “I had a letter from her yesterday,” she
replied. “How are they doin?” “They’re doin alright I reckon.”
11 Mittie was preoccupied with worry. She was worried
about what the doctor had said, and she was worried about her children and
whether or not she was going to have enough money to pay the rent next month.
12 “I am finished with school,” Buck announced that
evening. “What will you do, son?” Mittie asked. “I’m going to Ohio and stay
with Doodle and try to find a job up there,” he told her.
13 In the meantime, Dick had been out drinking again
with his former brother-in-law. “I don’t know why he wants to waste his time
running around town with Buddy,” Mittie wrote to Doodle. “I guess he just likes
to worry me!” “Bowser got drunk and lost his whole paycheck,” she continued.
14 Edna read her mother’s letters with dismay. It was
apparent that she was overwhelmed with worry, but Doodle felt powerless to do
anything about it. After all, she was over six hundred miles away. “What can I
do?” she fretted.
15 That fall, Mittie was sitting out on the porch
visiting with Sis and Herman’s wife and crocheting when she felt a sudden stab
of pain. “Oh, oh my!” she gasped. “Mama, are you ok?” Sis asked. “I think you’d
better call for the doctor,” she whispered. Her forehead had broken out in a
cold sweat.
16 Ethel stayed with her mother-in-law while Sis went
inside to call for the doctor. “The doctor is on his way, Mama,” Sis told her
when she returned. Then they helped her into the house and put her to bed.
17 “She’s had another heart attack,” the doctor told
them. “She is in a very weakened condition now,” he continued. “I don’t even
want her walking up and down the stairs anymore!” “She must not have any
excitement for a while,” he finished.
18 Although Luke had divorced the mother of his
children and remarried by that time, his first wife decided to take the
children to see their grandmother when she heard about what had happened. “Can
I bring Barbara and Terry to see you?” she asked over the phone. “Tell them
that their granny would love to see them,” Mittie replied.
19 When they arrived, Pearl ushered them into the
kitchen where Mittie was seated at the kitchen table. “Give your granny a hug,”
Brooksie told her children.
20 Later, worried that the children might be getting
bored, Mittie invited them to play a game of Chinese checkers with her. When
their game was finished, she tried to get them to stay and eat with her.
21 “We’ve got to get home,” Brooksie smiled. “Well,
I’m so proud that you came to see me,” she told them.
22 In the meantime, Buck had returned to Alabama and
signed up with the Air Force. He wouldn’t leave right away, but he was
scheduled to leave for his training by the end of the year. His drifting and
wandering days were over, but his mother was not comforted by the development.
23 The Korean peninsula was now engulfed in war, and
the news from there was not good. “I don’t guess I’ll have another minute’s
peace as long as I live,” she declared.
24 In November, Mittie received the news that her
father had died in Tennessee. “They didn’t let me know that he had died,
because they were afraid to worry me,” she wrote to Doodle. “Needless to say, I
didn’t sleep a wink all night.”
25 Dick, however, had landed a job at Redstone Arsenal
and had temporarily moved back into his mother’s house. Then, in December,
Mittie received a phone call informing her that Dick had been hurt in an
accident at work. Once again, she was in turmoil.
26 “Your brother has been hurt, and I don’t have any
way to get to him in the hospital,” she told Buck and Pearl when they got home.
“You don’t need to go anyway, Mama!” they both exclaimed. “We’ll go and check
on him,” they assured her.
27 “He mashed his fingers in one of them presses,”
Buck told her when they returned. “They had to take off a couple of joints,”
Pearl added. “Lord have mercy, is he goin to be alright?” Mittie demanded.
“Yeah, Mama, he’ll be alright – it’ll just take time to heal,” Buck assured
her.
28 A week later, Buck had left for his training in
Texas. She had another one of her “spells” on the day he left. Then, just
eleven days into the new year, she had a massive heart attack and died.
Mittie’s long struggle was finally over.
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