I thought of Grandma Furgason as more than a mother-in-law. She was my friend. It was to her home that I first went to when leaving Illinois Avenue for good.
So I did not think it unusual that she “called” me at 2:30 a.m., waking me from a sound sleep in my loft bedroom at 728 East Chestnut Street.
She “asked” me to come and be beside her hospital bed in the front bedroom at 1529 McKay Street. Her hospital bed stood where my parents four poster bed had been placed during my childhood years.
On their bed, my sister, Jean, and I were snuggled during one year’s Christmas holidays when we were too ill to climb the steps to reach our second-floor bedroom that was opposite our Brother Paul’s.
On my parent’s bed, I diapered Duion when he came home from Saint Joseph’s Hospital as a newborn infant.
So I said goodbye to Grandma Furgason and the times we shared in her home around the corner at 4211 Sherman Avenue. It was the end of another album page that linked our families together. There would be no vegetable garden at either address and we would spend our days giving thanks that we had lived among so many good family members. I hope to write their stories and if I do not, I hope someone else picks up the pen to do it. They all deserve to be remembered.