She is always hesitant when I bring up the topic of visitors, and only half heartedly agrees to them. But today was the best yet. The three friends of 65 plus years laughed and reminisced. They covered the streets of the old neighborhood again. Was where Beverly lived the 6th Ward or the 7th? Where did she first meet Mother? She couldn’t quite remember. Where did they watch the Mardi Gras as kids? Where did they first see a second line?

And each time I am around them, listening to them, I learn something new.

Arthé said she had visited New Orleans twice since Katrina. The rest of us had not realized that. “Jones School looked so small to me now,” she said, when we lit on that. “Me, too” I said. I just drove by it last month, the boarded up brick building in the process of being stripped. “Demolition by neglect.”

My brother, Eric, joined us and selected some Danny and Blue Lu Barker from his I-Tunes. He talked about the first Mardi Gras Indian he saw, turning the corner at my aunt’s St. Anthony Street house, very early one Mardi Gras morning. “Wild Man”, he said. “He was completely black, and was waving a raw turkey neck.”

He talked about the visit in the summer of 1971-of being in New Orleans when Louis Armstrong died, and my Dad’s taking him to see the funeral. “My first jazz funeral. Daddy hoisted me up on his shoulders, or on a car or something. I looked down and I saw some guy pouring out a big drink for himself. I thought, what is this?”

“I didn’t know there was a party going on” the physical therapist said as she opened the door on us.

“I think you just ended the party,” I said. Time for a physical therapy session.

Arthé leaned over to kiss Mom goodbye. Bev stood up to lean in and said something to her, and the tears streamed down Mother’s face, as she, too, kissed her goodbye. I reached for a lipstick on the stand and painted her lips – a frosty plum, her favorite color.

“What did you say to her” I whispered to Bev as we left.

“I told her we loved her, and we are all praying for her.”

Mom and me at her 85th birthday celebration