The Red Flannel Rag

PROLOGUE

My phone rang at 7:15 in the morning on December 10, 2001. When I answered

it was my sister, Brenda. I braced myself for the onslaught of her voice yelling about

Mom being home from the hospital when she really needed to be in a nursing home. I

knew Brenda and Hilda were very tired and stressed after five years of twenty-four hour

care giving. Brenda gave up her job so she could spend the daylight hours with Mom.

Hilda gave up her nights with her family. But this time Brenda’s voice was quiet and

calm, “Peg, I believe this is the day that Mom is going to die.” “What are you saying?” I

answered, trying not to panic. “She can’t die today. It’s her birthday.” My sister was

silent on the other end of the line as I considered the possibility that Mom would die on

her birthday. She was turning eighty-one today.

I concluded, after what seemed like an hour, that to choose to die on her birthday

would be classic Myrtle Shifflett. She had continued to make all choices related to her

life up until this day. She had just insisted on returning home from the hospital two

days before her birthday although her doctors had recommended recovery and

rehabilitation in a nursing home. I immediately knew that Mom was still in charge of

her life and was choosing her birthday to die so her life would have no frayed edges such

as eighty-one years and one month. She was choosing for her life to be exactly eighty-

one years. I said to my sister, “She just got well enough to come home to die. I will be

there in two hours.”

The drive seemed to last forever as my mind considered what I would face when I

got there. If in fact she were dying, would she struggle and cling? Would she know me?

6