My sister, Charlotte A. Purvis, paged me from Durham, N.C. shortly after 11 a.m. on a recent Tuesday. There was no message, just her telephone number. When I returned the call, Charlotte skipped the small talk and went directly to the point. Our stepfather, William H. Polk, had died in a nursing home in Northport, Ala., just across the bridge from our native Tuscaloosa.

The next three days were hectic, as my three sisters -Charlotte; Sylvia C. Polk of Northern California and Susan Polk Gandy of Tuskegee, Ala.- and I participated in nightly telephone conferences, made funeral arrangements, decided who would do what at the funeral, coordinated our travel schedules and made sure Mama was kept abreast of our plans. Our mother, Mrs. Martha L. Brownlee, had remarried three years earlier and was living in Augusta, Ga.

We decided to arrive in Tuscaloosa on that Friday, the day before the funeral. I flew to Birmingham and rented a car for the 47-mile drive to Tuscaloosa. Charlotte and Sue drove from their homes and Chris, who had spent most of her vacation time visiting William while he was hospitalized, decided she would skip the funeral, preferring to cherish her last memories of him alive.

As planned, we decided to offer our personal reflections of growing up with William. I noted that long before the modern Civil Rights Movement, William wore his hair natural, taught us about the rich history of Africa and was, in short, a Race Man. And that wasn't all. "He was not my stepfather - he was my father," I explained. "The only reference to 'step' in our household was when we were talking about stepping toward success." All of us talked about his love for reading and how - even though his formal education ended in the fourth grade - he had an insatiable appetite for knowledge.

I was proud of all three of my sisters for exhibiting so much grace under pressure and organizing a funeral that was a celebration of William's life. Sue's church, Greater New Life in Tuskegee, had paid for family and friends to have dinner following the burial.

Immediately after dinner, Charlotte, her husband, Fred, and their son, Phil, headed back to North Carolina. I had planned to return to Washington, D.C., the following day. Sue and her husband, Iverson Gandy Jr., and their daughter, Rachel, also had planned to drive back to Tuskegee on Sunday.

Charlotte was back in Durham and Sue and I were still in Alabama when my family received a second jolt of bad news. After burying William on Sunday afternoon, Mama's current husband, Henry Brownlee Jr., died that night. He had accompanied her to Tuscaloosa, which also was his hometown, but fell ill and was rushed to the local Veterans Administration Hospital. When they transferred him to the Birmingham facility, he was declared dead on arrival.

Instead of returning home on Monday, I drove Mama back to Augusta, stopping by the VA Hospital in Birmingham for her to authorize an autopsy and to pick up some personal items, including his wedding band. Taking my mother back to a house she had left with her husband just three days earlier was difficult. As the oldest child and only son, this was a time I wanted to be with my mother. She's been there for us all our lives, and accompanying her on this difficult trip was a son's responsibility. Still, it was not easy for her to set foot back into that house. Fortunately, Charlotte had called a neighbor with a key to the house so that lights would be on when we returned.

The phone rang incessantly. After all of these years, Mama had finally agreed to get call-waiting just months earlier and her timing couldn't have been better. Amazingly, when life-long friends called from Tuscaloosa, her former church family at Providence Baptist Church in Cleveland, and her new church, Tabernacle Baptist Church in Augusta, it was Mama who was comforting them rather than vice versa.

When Army Master Sgt. George Shouse came to assist in maneuvering through the military bureaucracy after a former soldier has died, the first thing Mama did was clean his dirty eyeglasses and inquire about his well-being.

After Brownlee was given a military burial at Beaufort National Cemetery in South Carolina, we went into a restaurant and before we sat down, Mama was busy complimenting a little girl on her hair. When Mama finished eating, she folded several bills in her hands and instructed me to give to them to the drivers from Williams Funeral Home to pay for their lunch.

"Guys, I have 54 years of experience with this, so make it easy on yourselves. My mother wants to pay for your dinner and whether you want her to or not, she's going to do it. So my advice is to make it easy on everybody and accept it." We all had a good laugh and they wisely accepted Mama's gesture.

When I left Augusta the next day, I had seen Mama's double pain up close. More than anything else, I saw her looking after the needs of others rather than her own. She is a special lady, not just because she's my mother. Even while dealing with death, she continues to teach us so much about life.