She was not the first sister of seven to lose a baby this way, and wouldn’t be the last, but she was the only sister to die with her child. However, that doesn’t mean the others didn’t have serious issues.

Laura’s younger sister Bonnie, my mother, had come to keep her company before time for the birth and help afterward, but what does a fourteen year old girl know about horrendous death? Everyone was in shock. After Laura’s parents were notified of the birth, they walked the three miles down another dirt road and through the field where they were met by a running, distraught Bonnie. “Laura died!” She was traumatized, needing comfort. She was not capable of being gentle or thoughtful or delicate. Her mother passed out in the path. Her father, though in disbelief himself, still thought to lift his wife’s legs.

My mother never forgot even the minutest detail of that night. Not the doctor’s stringy hair, not the song Laura was singing, not her asking her husband not to go squirrel hunting, and, of course, not the blood everywhere. How could she? And she told it to me many, many times. And it would happen to herself in different variations. There were twelve children in the family, but due to Laura’s early death there were only twelve for one month.

I do not know how long after her death this picture was taken.