"I was looking after you girls the day your mama died."
Now that it was three years since Mama had died, people did.
Not even when Mama died had his eyes been wet.
Mama was dying one minute and would be fine the next?
How much went past after her mama died, while you were trying to drink yourself to sleep every day?
"I stopped when my mama died," she explained in an interview the other day.
I'd hardly been back for years - only briefly, when Mama died.
Mama having died when I was a baby, it fell to me to undertake the practical side of living.
And then, when Mama died, I was at last free!
He had been back only briefly when Mama had died.