This morning before leaving for work, the MoH told me that my mother was headed into some very severe weather. Right before heading upstairs to see for myself, I heard that storms had gone through in the night and that someone had died in Missouri.
Glancing at the clock, thinking of the two hour time difference, and knowing my mother’s Emily most likely woke her up at the crack of dawn, and that she’d been driving for a few hours already, I knew my mother was probably not in a great place.
“Where are you?” I began as I have for the past few days.
“Headed into Little Rock, AK,” she responded as I stared at the weather map opening up on my monitor covered with huge yellow and red sections punctuated with exclamation marks indicating tornado watches.
“Mom, there’s an enormous storm headed right for Little Rock. You have to stop. Go into a coffee shop or something.”
“Well, it’s strange, because there isn’t anybody on the road this morning.” She’s been traveling on the I-40 with lots of big rigs. “But my sister called a while ago and told me to turn on the radio and listen. I heard about last night.”
“There’s nobody on the road because they know about the weather, Mom. You have to stop. You might have to leave Emily in the car.”
“Okay, don’t worry about me too much.”
About 45 minutes or so have gone by as I continue to watch the weather and I finally decided to call her again.
Do you think she stopped? No. She drove right through it saying “it got really dark for a while, but the sun’s out now so I’m going to stop for lunch.”
Unbelievable.
Leave a Reply