Bill and Herb and I had been allowed to go skating that night.   We never were allowed to go skating alone at night, but we went out with a gang that went skating over on a pond, not in the creek. I wasn’t very old–probably ten or eleven and Bill was a year older and Herb a year younger [That’s close. According to records, it was before March, 1919, so mother would have been 12, Bill 13 and Herb 10). When we came home, we were aware of why we had been allowed to go skating.

Some time before, a very elderly aunt of my father’s was brought home from Florida quite ill. [‘Aunt Am’ Amy E. Anderson Roof was born in 1843, so would have been 75 when she died.] My mother and dad were taking care of her. [Vera and Guy Anderson].

Aunt Am passed away while we children were out skating and I’m sure this was the reason Mother and Dad sent us out to skate, so that we would be out from under foot at this particular time.

Of course, we were very curious about this sort of thing, but as soon as we got in the house, we noticed–well, actually before we got in the house, we noticed–that the undertaker was there and they had shut off the room in which Aunt Am had died and they were working on the dead body.  At that time nearly everyone who had a death in the family, they were buried from the home and the undertaker came and prepared them for burial at the house, which they did with our Aunt Am Roof.

Dad and Mother were tired because they had been up so many,many nights caring for her.  Before they went to bed, they had put us upstairs, tucked us in good and tight  because it was quite chilly.  The boys were in the first room upstairs in a double bed, and I had a three-quarter bed in my own little room in the back of the upstairs. I’m sure that night [my parents] went to sleep so soundly because it was the first night that they had been able to sleep straight through for a long time.

In the middle of the night, I wakened and realized that my bed was directly over where Aunt Am’s dead body lay on the floor below our rooms.  I was so sure that she was coming up through that floor after me.  I don’t know why.  We had never been frightened by bodies before, but I was quite frightened.

I couldn’t stay in my bed any longer.  I got up to the foot of my bed and called “Bill! Bill!”  He answered immediately because he wasn’t asleep either because evidently he had death on his mind, too.  We were thinking  Aunt Em was down there and she was dead. We hadn’t had any experience with a dead body before this.

I asked, “Bill will you come in here and get me?” and he said, “No, Harriette, I won’t put my feet on the floor of your room, but if you get to the foot of your bed and jump off as far as you can, I’ll reach in and get you. ”

So I got to the foot of my bed and I jumped as far as I could jump to my door, and Bill reached in and grabbed a hold of me and jerked me into the boys’ room.

I felt much better because I was no longer directly over that dead body of Aunt Am that lay straight under my bed. I got in bed with Herb and Bill, and we lay there and we talked until we heard a rooster crow.

We were so delighted. Bill said, “Well, it’ll soon be daylight.  Then we won’t be afraid.  The rooster’s crowing; it’s getting to be morning.”

It turned out that our parents were sleeping so soundly they didn’t hear us, even when I jumped.  They were sorry when they heard our story that they had not told us, but it never once entered their minds that we would have any fears at all because they had no fears and didn’t expect us to.

So that was our first experience with death, which was rather frightening for three little kids. It was a winter experience that we had related to skating, but thank goodness not a regular winter experience.