The downfall started on a sunny, spring day when my father was told he had to move to the country for his health. My mother loved city life, but for dad's health, she would move to the country even though it was a mystery to all of us.

After much discussion and some strong arguments, my parents agreed on where our new home would be. It was a four-bedroom farmhouse situated fifty miles north of our home town, where my father was a partner in a company started by the founding family of the town. He had worked up through the ranks to upper management. Due to his health and the long commute, he was given a phone consulting position. This salary was less then he made before. But. it still helped with the doctor bills.

We packed up my mother's car and father's pickup with our things. Aggie and Henry, rode with my mother. Natalie and I were with dad in his truck.

When we arrived, we saw that the farmhouse was situated on a hill almost like a castle. Down to the right was the barn which housed a cow, a goat, and a couple of hens and a rooster. Down to the left was a garage which had room for our vehicles, and housed a tractor and gardening tools. The house and these two buildings were attached by a moat-like circular drive. One side of that drive was connected to the street by a line of trees which stood like sentinels. In the back were the corn and wheat fields, a greenhouse with outside gardens, and what looked like a good-sized sharecropper's cabin.

In the next few months, while Dad convalesced, a farmer friend of Dad's helped Henry
plant the crops. Also, Aggie, Natalie and I were taught to milk the animals correctly so we wouldn't get angry moos from the cow, or kicked to kingdom come by the goat. We also learned how to make cheese and collect the eggs without getting pecked until we bled.

So, with his rest, by harvest time, Dad was well enough to help Henry with the harvest. And by this time, we figured out the Aggie would be the milker, Natalie the gardener, and I was relegated to help Mom in the house and bake pies to eat and sell. When I had extra time I would help Natalie with the weeding and picking the flowers, vegetables, and herbs. Aggie also had a gift as a seamstress, so she took in work to do when she had finished her chores. Henry also helped other farmers harvest their fields.

Natalie and mother made bi-monthly trips to town to sell our wares and at harvest to grind some wheat to flour and some corn to meal. The rest we sold. So, being frugal with the groceries, clothes and other good we needed, we were slowly paying off the medical bills and adding to the bank account.

This worked well for a few years. But, the infrequent trips to town weren't enough for my mother, for she missed her friends. She slowly began to resent the time away from her friends and the shops she liked to shop and gossip in. Since the farmhouse wasn't big enough to throw the lavish parties my mom hosted at our mansion in town, she only saw her friends on the selling trips and when she was able to attend a party at one of her friends' houses.

Natalie noticed mom getting quieter and quieter until only a few curt words would come out on trips to town.

After some time, Aggie and Henry started complaining that I wasn't adding enough to our coffers. What they didn't know is that mom had stopped doing any of the housework accept making breakfast. Her making breakfast made everyone think things were normal inside the house. But I had to make my pies in the small amount of time left between housework and helping dad with the management of house and farm.

Natalie and mom still made the drive into town to sell the garden and greenhouse tenants and my pies. In time we also added canned vegetables that Natalie and I canned when they became ripe.

All things seemed to be weaving together again. Everyone had their to-do lists that were like daily prayer. But this came to an abrupt stop when mother and Natalie got into a car accident on the way back from a town in a strong rain storm in which my mother died.

The following is Natalie's account of the accident for the inquest into the accident.

We were returning from our marketing visit to town when a sudden severe thunderstorm started. In the heavy wind and rain visibility was poor. Despite Mother's slower speed, she fishtailed around a hairpin turn and hit a guardrail which stopped us from rolling into a deep ravine.
The owners of a farm a short distance away must have heard the sound of the crash and called the police and ambulance in response. The emergency vehicles arrived like ghosts out of the mist that had red and blue eyes. We could barely hear the sirens over the thunder. The EMTs put them both on stretchers for the trip back to town to the hospital.

Before the ambulance arrived, Natalie saw that mom looked like a mosaic of shattered glass and blue silk. There also was a goose egg forming on mom's forehead where she had hit it against the steering wheel. Luckily, Natalie had bent over with her head on her knees and hands around her ankles, so she just had a few shards in her back. She also had a bump on the back of her head from hitting it on the underside of the dash.

In shock and fear at seeing sea of glass shards in her, mother started pulling them out. Since the first few only caused a little pain and a trickle of blood, she continued the extractions. Then, she pulled one out of her neck and it spouted like Old Faithful.

Natalie immediately sprung to put pressure on the wound. It slowed it down to a medium trickle. Then another eruption of blood from mom's chest caused Natalie to switch one hand from the neck wound to the chest wound. Mom finally realized what was happening and put her hands on the chest wound and Natalie returned hers to the neck wound.

By the time the ambulance arrived mom's face was as white as whipped cream. Though the EMTs were able to control the blood flow and bandage mom, they said to call the family just in case. So, Aggie, Henry and I met the ambulance at the hospital where mom was announced dead on arrival due to losing so much blood. Natalie was checked out. She had suffered a sprained wrist and had a headache from the bump. She was given medication and orders to stay in bed for the rest of the week.