Mother

I have a story for today and I don't quite know what to make of it.

My 90 year old mother in law, whom I've blogged about from time to time in the almost ten year history of this blog, passed away yesterday.

Before we got the call, we had decided to treat ourselves to a "Black Friday" breakfast out, something we used to do a lot but stopped doing except for special occasions. 

This is where we decided to go yesterday.

The "Greek House" (which serves a lot more than Greek food) has been owned by an Egyptian everyone calls Sam for the past 25 years.  It has been through two floods, the second of which closed it for a couple of months. Meantime, a large manufacturer across the street's building was ruined by that flood and had to move four miles or so down the road.  But the Greek House survived.

One day recently, a sign appeared in their window.

It's hard to see above, but it reads "Thank You to our loyal customers who have kept us in business for 25 years, and thanks to our loyal staff. We couldn't have made it without you.  Sam."

Now, when we have eaten here, the plates the food was served on were normal restaurant plates.

Not yesterday morning around 7:15 AM.  In fact, the normally fast service wasn't there.  We waited and waited.

When our food was served, each of our plates was decorated on the rim, in big bold script, with the word MOTHER.

In faint lettering, there were various traits of the ideal mother listed.  Loving.  Patient. Kind.  Compassionate.  And so forth.

MOTHER....

It was so strange that I almost took a picture of the plate and my food, but decided not to.  Now I wish I had. Maybe you don't believe me but this is 100% true.

We finished our breakfast and went home.

And, not five minutes after entering our house, we got the phone call from the nursing home.


I'm still wondering: 

How did Sam know?