Mattie Boykin, cont'd

Milton serves breakfast

Gladys: I made my decision from my heart. I felt that she gave me all that she had since I was growing up, and now it's my time to take care of her, and I will take care of her. I feel I owe her that. And I'll stick by her. I'll do whatever it takes. Whatever it takes to get the job done; she's first in my life. She's like a commitment of a wedding vow. Till death do us part. And she would do that for me.

Larry: And it's the same thing she would have done for us. If for some reason one of us was in an accident, and we had a spouse that didn't want to take care of us, she always let us know that she would take care of us. It's just something that we intend to do without second thoughts. And like I said, we're fortunate in that we have jobs with a little flexibility that we can do it, and that we have each other. We work around each other.

For example if I have her and something comes up, an emergency or I have to do something, I just call one of the two and there's always between the two of them, someone's available. We have a schedule of every four months. We have four months out of the year that we keep her, we rotate. And during that time, if I needed a weekend off or I needed to do something for a weekend or during the week, I'll call Gladys, I'll call Ray, and between the two of them, one of them is always available. We just rotate between the three of us.

Milton: Family unity? Well, I guess the best example of it is what you see right here. I mean, we work together, depend on each other. It isn't always peaches and cream; even between us three. We'll have a fight, or a disagreement, but we all know that the one single thing we have in common is looking out for our mother, and that outweighs anything. Everything else, you know, has to be pushed aside. We won't argue in front of her. If we have a disagreement, we won't discuss it in front of her. That's the best way I can explain it.

Lunch at KFC

Gladys: Family unity to me started when we were growing up with my mother, and then when I got grown with my own kids, we couldn't wait till the weekend came -- we headed to Mama's house. And she'd get into the kitchen and just cook, cook, cook, and we'd just eat, eat, eat. And that's family unity to me. I see her there in the kitchen, I see her on the porch, I see her by the grill. I see her with all her children that come over, and she sees that everybody's happy. And she'll get Larry on the phone or whatever, and she'll say something that will put us back together, and we'll have a reunion. Every weekend, we would all be at her house. And she had it ready for us. That's family unity for me.

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