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She had entered the hospital with a blood clot in her leg. Overnight the clot moved and entered her lungs, killing her. This was in the days when there were not blood thinners available. My father was forced to return home to inform us she had passed away. At the funeral I remember sitting in the front row with my family. I was puzzled why everyone else was crying so I cried too. My father took a picture of Dennis, Jay and I at the cemetery. They had sad looks on their faces and mine was wreathed with a broad smile. That fall I was sent to reside with my Aunt Arrilla and Uncle Ron Wright in Charlo, Montana. They took great care of me and loved me and I loved and adored them. I attended first grade there.

I missed my family so much. Aunt Rilla wrote to my father. She mentioned there was a lady divorcee living in her rental house next door. She felt Mary Jessen Smith would make a great wife for Bob, my father. My father came to take me back to the farm and at the same time asked Mary if she would consider coming to the farm for the summer as a housekeeper. She said yes. At the end of the summer my father proposed and they were married in September 1959.

Two years after my mother passed away my father re-married Mary Jessen Smith. I sang at the lovely wedding in Ronan, Montana. I sang the song

“True Love” and “Love and Marriage, Go Together like a Horse and Carriage.”

The friends I made in first grade in Montana were the Maughan girls. They were Mary’s grandchildren! What a small world.

Our “Little House on the Prairie Life,” saw blowing and drifting snow. There were no mountains to stop the wind. My father visited southern Alberta later in life and said,

“I don’t know how I lived in such a windy place for fifty years!”

The temperature on the prairie was often minus zero down to fifty below; biting cold for Dad and my older brothers to do chores.