My mother was cook and hostess and every family get-together for years. Whatever the holiday, or just a Sunday dinner, she filled the table full of delicious food. She even did an extra table full of deserts, loaded with pies, puddings, and cakes of almost every kind.

She loved being outside. She worked outside, along side my dad, all of her life--in the fields, the pasture, the chicken houses. All of us took walks outside on Sunday afternoons, roaming the pasture and the woods, looking for wildflowers in the Spring.

My mother and dad did everything together. She worked with him outside on the farm, and he helped with the housework. They worked together, and everywhere they went, they were together, including every service at the little church in town.

Through all the years and all the changes in the family, they were together, and they were always there for us as their children.

As the older children were growing up and leaving home, we still got together for every holiday: Every Thanksgiving and Christmas, every Easter, every Memorial Day, Fourth of July, and Labor Day, every Mother's Day and Father's Day. The two younger ones, Bob and I, moved further away, but we always sent gifts or flowers and cards, and we called often, especially on the those special days.

They were always together, until my dad died just before Father's Day in 1985.

My mother lived on through ten more Mother's Days, and the roles reversed a little more every year-- we took care of the holiday plans, and then we took care of her. Then just before Mother's Day in 1996, she went to be with my dad again.

"Always"