Chapter 14“Dew, I’m so sorry,” Fancy Hogg said at the hospital in Amory as we waited for Joel and Charlie to arrive. Fancy had come to stay with me.
“You all right?” she asked.
I shrugged. To be honest, no, I was not all right. But I knew the mechanics of death as well as the next undertaker. One day you’re here, the next you’re on someone’s embalming slab, going places you may not want to go, doing things you may not want to do, but you’ve got no choice. Folks are poking and prodding, filling you up with chemicals, dressing you, fussing with your hair and nails, and all you can do is lie there and take it.
I had never expected Mama to die suddenly, and certainly not at such a young age. She was only sixty-seven!
The paperwork on my desk told a different story. Hadn’t we just conducted
