The Ramp With Four Names on the Rail

Her regular doctor had been after us about a ramp since January.

When the cornea doctor in Huntsville said Mom would need to be seen every week for the first several months after the transplant, then every two weeks, he asked us too.

“How are you getting her in and out of the house?” he wanted to know.

I told him. He did not like it. He wrote it on a little prescription pad, “Wheelchair ramp, medically necessary,” and signed it and handed it to me like that would build it.

I had brought up the ramp to my sisters at Christmas. I brought it up again on the phone in February.

Marla said she had read that Medicaid would pay for home changes like that if Mom ever went on it, and maybe we should wait and see.

Kay said she knew a man in Chattanooga who did ramps and she would ask him. She did not ask him.

So that was where things stood when they came up the mountain in April with the deed in Kay’s purse.

A deed is not finished just because somebody signs it. Kay knew that better than anybody.

In Alabama it has to be acknowledged in front of a notary before the probate office will record it, and Mom had signed it at the kitchen table with nobody official in the room.

“We’ll run her by the bank on the way to lunch,” Marla said. “There’s a notary at the branch in Rainsville.”

There was, a young woman named Kim. But what I want you to know is that I went with them.

I went because Mom does not go anywhere without me, and because I was the only one who knew how to get her down the steps backward. Teresa offered.

I said no, I had it. Marla and Kay stood in the yard and watched me do it, and neither of them said a word about how it looked.

At the bank, Kim the notary asked Mom if that was her signature and if she had signed it of her own free will. Mom said yes, ma’am, it was, and she had.

Kim stamped it. That was all there was to it. Kay took it down to the probate office in Fort Payne the following week and had it recorded.

People have asked me since then why I did not stop it. Why I did not call a lawyer, or the probate judge, or somebody. I have thought about that a long time, and the answer is plain.

Mom signed it herself. She was not out of her head. She was half blind for a season but she knew who her girls were and she trusted them.

A deed between family is not something you fight in court with your own mother sitting at the table, and I was not going to make her choose sides in her own kitchen.

And something else could not wait for a fight. The steps could not wait.

I could argue about a deed for a year and Mom would still be going down those four steps backward every Thursday morning to see the eye doctor.

That night after they left, I sat at the kitchen table after Mom was asleep and did what I do. I did the books. I got out my savings statement and a legal pad and a pencil.

For three years I had been putting back money for a car.