7

Mother walked downstairs Monday morning. We moved the dining room couch into the kitchen by the stove for her to lay on. Then at nighttime instead of her going upstairs to bed for the night, Eugene and Nathan put a new iron bed in the parlor by the stove for her to sleep in. Mother had bought this bed previously to put into a room to rent. Annie came in that day. Sarah was visiting with Alice in Syracuse. During the day, I went across the street to get my brother, Joseph to come and administer to her.

Eugene, my brother, and Sadie Sarah Sessions had another brick home on the lot right next door to my mother's. Sadie was a girl from Bountiful who married Eugene. They had a nice, beautiful home. Eugene said, "If there is any change in Mother, will you come over and tell me?" I could see my Mother was getting worse, so I was going to get Eugene.

Clara Clark, the girl that was with me, said, "I will go." While she was getting Eugene, Joseph, Maria, Edward, Wealthy, Aunt Mary, and others stopped in on their way home from a golden wedding anniversary celebration for Aunt Mary's brother and his wife. They had heard Clara remark about how ill Mother was and were greatly surprised. Their first comment to me was, "We didn't know Aunt Susan was so ill."

After Clara went and before Joseph and the others arrived and I was alone with Mother, I saw her look up toward the ceiling. She called out and said, "Oh my companion and my mother and father." She died around one thirty or two o'clock in the morning of election day, November 4, 1902. I didn't want to cry in the room. Nathan put his arm around me, led me into the other room, put my feet on the hearth of the stove, and took my shoes off. I noticed a little hole in my stocking. I felt so terrible because my mother always said I should never wear anything with a hole in it. Early in the morning I went out to feed the chickens like my mother had always done.

Even grieving, Eugene took me that day to vote. It was my first time; I was twenty-one. I voted for Teddy Roosevelt.

As there was no embalming in those days, someone stayed with the deceased and put saltpeter on the face. I did it a good part of the time. My brother Horace was in Salt Lake City at the time going to school and they sent for him. The casket was a wooden box and was at the home before the funeral. The burial was two days later. After Mother died I lived in Mother's house and my sister Alice stayed there also with her three little children. Then her husband, Walter Steed, wanted her to go back to her farm