.
It was the middle of the afternoon.  My Aunt Essie, whom I called Sister, was working at the store and would not be home until 5 p.m.   Until then, Grandmom and Pop Pop were alone.  Mary usually checked on them everyday about this time.

 Shortly after her husband died, Mary moved back home to Hatteras, razed her old home place that was literally falling down, and built a new house with her husband's insurance money.   It faced Grandmom and Pop Pop's home directly across the road.  Mary was thrilled to be back at Hatteras, away from the fast life up north.  She felt such a sense of security being surrounded by family members whose familiar faces were so much a part of her childhood. Although both of her parents were deceased, there were two of her father's brothers and their wives living on either side of her and two other widowed aunts living behind her on a short dead-end path that ran beside her yard.  Checking in on Pop Pop and Grandmom, her mother's only living sister, gave Mary not only a sense of purpose, but also an opportunity to visit with them, something to which she looked forward.  This was the second time today that she had crossed the road to make sure her Aunt Mag and Uncle Clifford were all right. 

It was a very warm, early April day suggesting that spring had finally arrived.  The air was still.  She noticed that the two doors on the front of the house were opened, and the windows were raised for the first time since last fall.  As she raised her hand to knock on the screen door that led from the piazza into the sitting room, she heard the most harmonious sound.  It was as if angels were singing inside.


 She stood for a moment, thinking that it must be the radio or television that she heard, but they were in the sitting room and the music was coming from another room.  Quietly she opening the screen door and stepped inside. 


Focusing in the direction of the music through a doorway that led into the hall and then into the only bedroom downstairs, Mary saw Grandmom lying in bed and Pop Pop sitting in a chair beside her. The head of the borrowed hospital bed was inclined so Grandmom was sitting almost upright. Her long, thin white hair was not in its usual platted bun held by bobbie pins on the back of her head, but cascaded behind her and on her pillow.  Pop Pop was leaning towards her.  Her hazel eyes were staring tenderly at him as he held her frail right hand next to his face.


Mary stood frozen.  She felt awkward knowing that she was intruding on the only kind of intimacy that was left for them.  Grandmom's condition followed a pattern much like that of her mother's before her.  It was first noticeable, when at 81 years of age, she suffered from a series of mini-strokes.  Since that time, the dementia had robbed her of knowing her family, of knowing where she was, of knowing how to walk, of her dignity, of knowing when she needed to use the bathroom.  For several months, no one had heard her say a word.  But there she was singing...


...and gazing upon the light of her life, the man with whom she had spent almost 74 years ---singing, as one would imagine an angel in the heavenly choir, and gazing with the passion and the affection of a young bride at the altar saying her wedding vows.  Together these soul mates brought to the old hymn two distinct voices that reinforced each other and harmonized beautifully, just as they brought to their marriage two distinct personalities that did likewise. 



Without making a sound so as not to disturb them, Mary turned and left her declining aunt and uncle alone to delight in each other's company.  Never had she witnessed such a moving expression of absolute love and devotion.  She was not able to contain her tears as their voices faded behind her.

At the end of the song, Grandmom's breathing became shallow and her stare was glazed, as it had been for so many weeks before. Her bowels moved into the diaper that Sister had put on her before she left for work.  She was in unfamiliar surroundings, staring into the tearful, sentimental feeble eyes of a stranger who was holding her hand.
Pop Pop was aware that he had just experienced a priceless moment ---a gift from heaven.  He closed his eyes and bowed his head to thank God for what had happened when his mind took him swirling back 70 years in time.


Two weeks later Grandmom tried out her angel wings for the first time.  Three years later, Pop Pop started using his. 

It was on a crisp, cool Tuesday morning in the fall of the year shortly after Pop Pop's death that Sister crossed the road, walking to Mary's house dressed for Sunday school and church.  That was our first clue that Sister had started growing her angel wings.  It took her 13 years to get them in working order. 

Almost 10 years later, Mary, dressed only in her pajamas, spent most of her day looking through the window into the courtyard of the Alzheimer's unit of the nursing home where she resided and worrying that her mother and father did not know where she was. 

One hundred and twenty miles from Mary's institutional residence, a young lady is standing in front of the activity room of another nursing facility reaching for a ball that has fallen from a rotating wire container into a linear trap below.   She picks it up,  glances at it, and shouts, "I, 16."  She pauses.  She shouts again, "I, 1,6."  She picks up another ball ---"O, 67 ... O, 6,7."  Another pause followed by, "B,6 ...B,6."  Naomi is in a wheelchair at a table with others some of whom are enjoying a game of Bingo.  She hears the words, but to her they are meaningless. 

She and Mary started growing their wings at about the same time in 1994.

On May 8, 1999, early on Saturday morning, Naomi, my precious mother, with her angel wings completely developed and ready for flight, joined my beloved Pop Pop, Grandmom, and Sister in heaven.  My brother and I miss her, but we are comforted in knowing that she is in a better place with people who love her as much as we.