My Mother Breaks Her Hip

During our time in Houston my mother had and broke her hip.  Mama had been in a bad state of mental illness, but she took care of the laundry.   She had gone to the clothesline to hang out clothes.   On her way back, she decided to pull a careless weed.  It broke and she fell in the middle of a red ant bed.  That was somewhere around 10 in the morning.  Their neighbor found her about 5:30 in the evening.  She was rushed to the hospital where they had to do surgery.  Strangely enough, when the neighbor found her she was totally rational, and remained that way for a long time.  There’s no telling how many times she was stung out there in that ant bed.  The temperature was over a hundred, and she had nothing to drink.  She had been there at least six or seven hours.  It was nothing short of miraculous that she survived.

Jim, Ruby, Gary, and I drove through the night to get to Clyde.  Ann and Elliott remained in Houston.  I visited her at the hospital, and we tried to help Daddy with household needs. 

Clothes needed washing.  Daddy had bought Mama an automatic washer, but she refused to use it.  She had and old ringer type washing machine.  I had to ask her how to run the thing, but I managed to get the clothes washed without getting my fingers caught in the ringer.

           We stayed there most of the time. I washed the clothes and we cleaned house.  An amazing thing happened.  Although she had been complete disengaged mentally earlier that morning, when Jasmine found her, she was totally rational.