Everybody's Got Something by Roberts Robin; Chambers Veronica

Author:Roberts, Robin; Chambers, Veronica
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2014-04-22T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18

A Lake House

I couldn’t believe that Momma was gone. I also couldn’t believe that I would be the one to call and tell my siblings. I had always dreaded receiving “the call” from one of them.

I was too numb to phone Dorothy, so Jeanette did. It seemed as if it took my big sister only a few minutes to come rushing back into the house with her girls. Sally-Ann didn’t answer her cell phone, so I called her husband, Ron. He handed Sally-Ann his phone, and she wailed when I told her Momma had just passed away. Then I called Butch. He’s so much like Dad, the strong, silent type, rarely showing emotion. It was one of the few times I’ve heard my big brother cry.

When Mom was living, police officers in the Pass would stop by every so often, just to check on her. Bless them for that! The night she passed, we called the funeral home and they sent not a hearse but what looked like a minivan. They backed into the driveway and they came inside and began preparing to take my mother.

There was a knock at the door and my nieces said, “That’s a police officer’s knock.”

I was a little surprised, and it was an unexpectedly light moment in the darkest of nights, because I asked them, “Excuse me, how do you know what a police officer’s knock sounds like?” And everybody laughed. We all needed to laugh.

I opened the door and, lo and behold, it was an officer. He saw the minivan and was concerned that Mom was being robbed. He said, “Is everything okay with your mother? I’m just checking things out.”

I felt so bad, I said, “Our mother just died, and that’s the funeral home.”

You should have seen the look on his face, he kept apologizing. “I’m so sorry,” he said over and over again. “I’m so so sorry.”

And I got a glimpse about how the next few days were going to go. Because as much as I wanted to close the door on the world, this was not a private loss. We had lost our mother, our matriarch, but Pass Christian had lost Lucimarian Roberts. Everyone in town wanted to share their grief over losing our mother. Ours wasn’t a private loss.

The officer came in and sat down for a second. He told me that his wife had breast cancer, and he’d seen me and Sally-Ann on the show that morning. We start talking, and I was crying and hugging him, wishing his wife well, and through it all, I knew that the thing that connected us was Mom.

We appreciated how the patrol officers kept an eye on Mom, because sometimes people found out where she lived and came by the house. Once a couple came by and knocked on the door and they said, “We’re just visiting from Florida and we’re really big fans of your daughter.” Mom said, “Come on in.”

I remember being horrified when she told me the story later on.

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