The Secret to Southern Charm by Harvey Kristy Woodson

Author:Harvey, Kristy Woodson [Harvey, Kristy Woodson]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Chick-Lit, Womens
Publisher: Gallery Books
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-TWO

gifts

ansley

I don’t know what it was about saying it aloud, but telling us she had cancer had released something in my mother—and released something in her disease. In no time, she had gone from the sassy lady chatting with me over tea and sandwiches to a ninety-pound, gray waif. She was so weak and tired. It was time. Hospice was coming in a couple of days to get her out of pain. I couldn’t stand it. None of the medications seemed to help.

I’ve always been very good at being numb. I’m the doer, the fixer, the one to take charge. It keeps my mind off what is actually happening so I don’t have to face the sadness.

I had lived through tragedy, so I was in a good position to say this was not a tragedy. My mother had lived eighty-four beautiful years tomorrow, and it seemed she would die quickly after a life impeccably well done. I was proud of her for that, for the way she seized every opportunity, lived every moment to the fullest while she was here. I didn’t have to mourn the things she didn’t get to do because I knew she was leaving content. She wouldn’t have to suffer through years as an invalid or a slow, devastating decline. It was what she wanted, what we all wanted, really, but I couldn’t help but feel like a part of me was dying too.

We talked so much during those weeks, and the girls, like they were children again, spent most of their time crowded around their grandmother, trying to get her attention.

“You know,” she said to me that night, before she went to bed, “I think I’d like to go to Starlite Island tomorrow.”

There were moments, many of them, when my mother was confused, and I chalked this one up to that. We were practically carrying her to the bathroom now and setting her on the couch during the day so she could be a part of the action. Her skin had become translucent and thin over her bones. Even sitting caused her pain. I wouldn’t have thought about getting her into a car, much less bouncing her around on a boat.

Mom looked at me intently. “Ansley, I’m serious. I want to go to Starlite Island, where I have my best memories, one more time.”

I smoothed her hair across her forehead, kissed her sunken cheek, and said, “Well then, Mother, to Starlite we shall go.”

She smiled, her eyes closed. “I want to see your father,” she said softly. Daddy’s ashes were spread all across that beloved island of his, that place where we were raised, that raised us. But I knew she didn’t mean his ashes.

“Did you know,” Mom said, looking up at me, “that Starlite was the first place you ever saw water?”

I smiled, my eyes filling with tears. “I didn’t know that,” I whispered.

She nodded. “You were only four weeks old the first time we brought you to Peachtree Bluff. It was unusual for

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