Momma in a rowboat

When I was in junior high, my Mom had 3 or 4 heart attacks before they could get her to a doctor. She spent several weeks in a hospital in a town about 80 miles from us. While she was there she started hemorrhaging. The choices were to do a hysterectomy and chance her not surviving because of her heart, or let her bleed to death. She did fine with the surgery. When she came home she was bedbound. Our small town was only a couple of miles from the convergence of two rivers. It was expected that both rivers would crest at the same time and possibly flood our area. My brother and his family lived on a farm on the other side of one of the rivers. We drove my mother to the near side of the river and she was loaded on a rowboat and taken across the river where my brother got her and took her to his house. First of all, my mother couldn't swim and had never been in a rowboat on a river that was at flood stage (who has?). She was pretty helpless also. I don't remember ever feeling so forlorn as I did while standing there watching her cross that river (this sentence makes me feel a little weepy). I recall that night when the flood was predicted to happen. We lived a mile or two from the other river but I swore I could hear water lapping on the side of our house. As it turned out, one river crested before the other and only some land in the immediate area was flooded.

The doctors didn't think my Mom would survive that heart condition but she managed to do very well until age 95. We always leave God out of the equation, don't we?