Since 2003 this month has been bittersweet. It was then, when along with most of my siblings we stood, or sat (if a chair was open) by her bedside as she lay dying. We read to her from a bound notebook that her mother had put together called Wee Three. It was full of little poems that her mother had written with her children in mind back in the 1930s. Those poems brought a smile to her face during the six or seven days we read them, taking turns.

My mother did not sleep for nearly twelve days or nights. I believe she was frightened and it wasn’t until about that sixth day that she could speak at all. It was in the wee hours of the morning and I was alone sitting with her, when she haltingly said. “Why aren’t I in the hospital?” I answered. “They sent you home.” “Why,” she asked, and I answered. “The doctors said you are dying, mom.” She just turned away from me angrily. She didn’t speak to me again. A few days later, she passed. She was my mother, my friend, my sister, my roommate, and my daughter the last few years. I miss her still.

But she had suffered for so long. Death of a loved one is always difficult. The wound heals over, but the scars last upon your heart, and at times they bleed again.

However, years later, that poetry book was finished and published. Wee Three: A Mother’s Love in Verse. As NY Times Bestselling author Beth Hoffman put it. “This wonderful book is not only charming, but it holds a bit of magic on each page … the kind of magic of days gone by. The beautifully rendered prose urges us to remember, to close our eyes and revisit slower days, childhood days, when there were no cell phones or computers to distract us from seeing the wonders in nature and the world of make-believe…” – Beth Hoffman, Author of NY Times Best Seller, Saving CeeCee Honeycutt “…Throughout the pages of Wee Three, author Marta Moran Bishop takes the reader on a poetic trip back in time to the simpler, carefree years of our youth, when nothing was more important than chasing bumblebees or taking jovial walks through the snow… childhood.

It will always remind me of those last days and the joy on my mother’s face as we read it to her.

You can find the book here – www.martamoranbishop.com.

At Amazon.com, where it is available with illustrations by Hazel Mitchell, in paperback, kindle, and now also in audio. https://tinyurl.com/bdfey5jr

And at Barnes&Noble in paperback.