Our close-knit family changed from our own funeral attire and gathered to watch. Large platters of food lay on the kitchen table. Beribboned plants and flowers spilled into every corner. Death had wrapped its icy claws around my family and around an entire nation at the same time.
A few days before, on a sunny November morning, my mother and I talked over breakfast. “Your hairdo makes you look so grown-up,” Mama remarked. The bouffant bob, fastened into a French twist was my attempt to emulate Jackie Kennedy’s fashionable appearance. “You are picking me up so that I can have my hair done at the beauty parlor?” Fringed with the arrogance of adolescence, my question sounded more like a demand. “Yes, I’ll be there,” Mama agreed. My dad took me to school, away from my mother for the last time. “Yes, I’ll be there,” she had said, but she wasn’t.
Author: “Finding Faith”-Ann L. Coogler
Excerpt—God Allows U-Turns: American Moments-Collected by: Allison Gappa Bottke- Publisher: Barbour Publishing, Inc. All Rights reserved.
Trade paperback: ISBN: 158660581X
Price: $9.99
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