Mommy never gave up! When red ambulance #1 came to the house, I was put on a stretcher with my own blue blanket. We got into the ambulance, and we rode on East Joppa Road from Providence Road, then to the hospital, down Charles Street. Mommy told me I could tell my friends in school all about the ride in the new red ambulance. She and I both knew that we really wouldn't come that way together again. It was our last trip-with each other.

She said, "Your eyes are so beautiful and clear, Lin-we've driven this way so many times." She was thinking, "Dear God, watch over her. Keep her very close to you. Don't let her be afraid."

When we got to the hospital, I laid on the bed while Mommy sat up all night and patted my arms and smoothed my sheets. I was in the ward with other children, before we moved into our last room together. It was Halloween the next day, and Mommy sent for the party things we bought from a store on Harford Road two weeks before. She didn't want me to think about how much I hurt all over but to think about the fun we always had on Halloween.

Every Halloween I had a party, no matter what happened. The first one was in 1948, in Baltimore. We had it at the apartment building, The Chadford, where we lived for almost a year. I had two teen-age friends there-Pat and Barbara-who sometimes stayed with me. I liked it there because I could ride the bus to and from my school just several blocks away. It stopped right at the door of my apartment and right in front of my school. The party was very small, but we had fun anyway. Albert and Lynn came, and we played games and ate ice cream.

The next Halloween, in 1949, Mommy was moving into the house, but she had a beautiful party for me at Delvales's on Roland Avenue. We had funny ices and all kinds of Halloween molds, pumpkins and stars and candy, and there were lots of girls with very pretty costumes. I was a shepherdess. Afterwards, we went to the Halloween parade in front of my school, and Mommy watched all of us parade up and down. One little girl, Karen, disappeared, and Mommy worried about her and made us look for her. We finally found her, and then the party was over.

On my last party in October 1950, I couldn't move or talk, but I could watch the children as Mommy set a Halloween table for them. Many of the sick children could enjoy the party, and I was glad to watch them. Mommy kept coming over to me and saying, "Linda, Linda, I love you, I love you." She wanted me to know how sorry she was that I couldn't have fun like I used to. But she knew I'd like to watch the others because they were sick too, and wanted to have fun.

One day, a few weeks before, I felt better, and Mommy took me riding. She went along Harford Road so I could see the school children, and she stopped in a little gift shop to buy me Halloween things. She bought a mask and a set of willow ware play dishes and lots of other things including a pair of silly cross-eyed glasses to hide in for a joke.

But while she was in the store, the lady asked why she was in such a rush, and Mommy said her sick child was waiting. The lady asked what was wrong, and Mommy told her. The lady said there was no cure for it, and told her about a man who died from it. So Mommy suddenly felt terribly choked up and breathless, and terribly, terribly afraid, and she couldn't walk out of the store, she was so shocked. But she pulled herself together and called my nurse, Mrs. Thomas, who lived near there and chatted with her a minute. Then she was able to pay the lady and leave.

Page 62