Friday, me and the boys went down to Mom and Dad’s to eat some leftovers. Shortly after 2:00, the nursing home called and said that Pop-paw had passed away. Mom started to cry and thank God. She hung up the phone and told us. We were all so happy that we had been to see him the day before. I called Christy to tell her and she asked what happened. I told her “he was waiting for us to come see him.” He was waiting for us to come and wrap up the visits from the grandkids. Both of my cousins had been to see him since he had been in the hospital. It had been since Halloween since Christy had seen him and we had not seen him since the family reunion in October.
Anyway, from what I have been told, his wife was in his room with him and they had decided to eat some of the fruit we had taken the day before. He was cutting it for her and she heard him make a sound, looked at him and he seemed fine, then he made the sound again and was gone. She went down to the nurses’ station and told them to “come check on Hershell, I think he’s dead.”
Obviously, after calling her brother, she and my dad headed over to Weatherford to start taking care of what needed to be done. I wanted to go to the farm.
The Farm is the closest thing to “going home” that I have. When I was 5 we moved to Benbrook. We moved to Texarkana when I was 16. When I was 18 I started my college travels, and when I was 20 I moved to Lewisville. My parents have made several moves since I left Texarkana. I don’t have a bedroom that I grew up in. We don’t have a dining room that we always had Christmas dinner in. But we do have the farm. It is where I want to run to when things break down. It is refuge. It is my safe place. It is a security blanket. It is comfort food. It is where I had MANY Christmas dinners. We have been going to that house since they built it in 1984, and that property for years before that. The farm is home, and I wanted to get there as soon as I could.
It took me hours to pack. I couldn’t hold a thought. I would catch myself just standing still in the middle of the room, lost in my thoughts. Major and I finally got over there about 7:30 and waited in the dark in the car until Mom and Dad got there. Getting into the house and settling in allowed me to finally take a deep breath. It felt so good to be there.
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