>My grandmother, Ma Edge, died shortly before my third birthday. The stories I know about her life have come from my mother and other family members.

Many tales have been told about Ma Edge and her ability as a horsewoman. My cousin, Randall, wrote, "Ma could ride and, as the story goes, they never knew her to ever be thrown. About that I can't testify but I do know that a horse never lived that spooked her for one minute. Ma always had her riding horse and her buggy horse. The buggy horse was a beautiful Hamiltonian standing seventeen-and-a-half hands high and was a trotting horse. He held the world record at one time, when it was 2:10 for the mile. She used to hitch up Old Roy, as we called him, and make her trip sixteen miles to town and back the same day, and Old Roy seldom broke a sweat. He was truly quite an animal."

Old Roy was pulling the buggy in a recurring dream Ma shared with my mother Lyla, her daughter-in-law. In the dream, Ma would be riding home in the buggy. When Old Roy stopped at the gate, she would get out to open it. If she looked back at the buggy and saw someone riding with her, she knew that person would be the next to die. Apparently she was always right.

Mother told me that one day Ma said to her, "Lyla, I had the dream about the buggy last night, and this time I was in the buggy."

How long it was following this dream that she died, I do not know. She did know it was time to see to any unfinished business.

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