t is Tuesday

morning and I've put this off as long as I can. Normally I write my columns

on Friday mornings. That's been my ritual for more than a dozen years.

It also has

been my ritual to write from my heart. Most of the time it's easy to do

that. Sometimes it is not.

Daniel's mom

died on Friday. She drew her last little short puff of breath about the

time I would normally be sitting down to peck away at what you read in

this space each week.

We had gone

back to Albany on Thursday morning. She knew we were there. We think she

was aware that her children were near right up until about 12 to 14 hours

of her death. Maybe she was aware until the very end. I think I hope so.

The emptiness

is hard. Hard to feel. Hard to think about. Hard to write about. She was

the last of our four parents to go. A link to the past, to our roots,

to what came before, is gone now. We don't like what has happened.

I have encouraged

Daniel to talk. He was the youngest of her seven children. "Tell

me how you feel," I say.

He can't.

My brothers

and sisters gave him two red tip photinias. They decided they would give

him something that would live rather than send flowers that would wither

But the withering

flowers are appreciated too. Not only do they brighten a dark day, they

give those who grieve something to do in the funeral home on visitation

night when they feel so lost. Through their tears family members walk

around and around the crowded, empty room reading the cards. Delta was

well represented. Daniel was proud.

The Delta family

didn't just send flowers. The people came, too. Tim and Ray and Stacy

and Jerry ... They were there.

And friends

from yesteryear came from all over. Folks who haven't been seen or heard

from in decades showed up. Boys of long ago who ate at her table many

times came to pay their respect one last time.

She was quite

renowned for her table. I've mentioned her Sunday dinners before in this

column. They deserve more than a mention.

One daughter

commented about how hard her mom always worked and how she never really

understood what those Sunday dinners meant. "They (her mom and dad)

must have spent their entire grocery allowance to buy and fix for us when

we all would come home ..." she said.

She talked

like it was a hardship for them. I never saw it that way. It was their

way of life. Food, its preparation and the serving of it was what Grandma

knew. It was what she did. It clearly was what she enjoyed.

Granddaddy

would joke about the spread, "Now y'all need to eat all this food,"

he'd say. "What you leave I'll have to eat all week." Nothing

went to waste.

Her ham pie

was known far and wide. As I recall, she preboiled her ham slices, then

spread them all around in the biggest pan I ever saw. After breaking eggs

over each piece of ham and following that with a liberal application of

salt and pepper, she topped the dish with pastry strips before she baked

it.

It's probably

been a decade or so since she's been able to stand in a kitchen long enough

to cook a ham pie. ... I especially remember the cakes. I think she baked

eight cakes for my first Christmas in the family.

And I remember

how the men always ate first at the family gatherings while the children

ate in another room. The women would eat after the men were done. It was

their way.

That crowded

kitchen drove me nuts from day one. The heat could be unbearable at times.

And everybody bumping into everybody made me claustrophobic. It especially

irritated me that I did not get to eat with my husband.

In time, I

grew to appreciate their way. To recognize the culinary efforts of the

women who stayed in the kitchen as the labor of love that it was.

Such kitchen

duty was more than a labor of love. What I observed when I married into

the Holt family marked the end of an era, not just in my husband's family,

but in the history of the South. No more do women cook all day on Saturday

and rise up early, very early, well before dawn, to continue preparations

for Sunday dinner.

We buried more

than a tired, worn out shell of a body that housed a woman well for 86

wonderful years of loving service and devotion to her family. We buried

a Southern tradition on Sunday, April 1, 2001.