A cool, steady rain fell ominously over Cedar Hill Cemetery Sunday afternoon, Mother’s Day, as four siblings who’d traveled from both ends of the country arrived at their mother’s grave for the first time since her January funeral.

The showers looked as if they would soon pass, but Elsie Grant, George Hampton, Edna Scott and Tommy Scott didn’t wait to plant a pair of rose bushes and a cedar tree at the grave. They’d come too far to wait any longer to grieve together at Elsia Mae Scott’s final resting place — fewer than four months after the 84-year-old was killed in a morning house fire on Coccaro’s Alley.

“After my mother’s death, I didn’t get a chance to grieve the way I wanted to because I had to be strong for my own three children,” said Edna Scott, who had ridden an overnight bus from Charleston, S.C., to join her brothers and sister in Vicksburg on Sunday. “This gives me a chance to just grieve with my siblings, and I really need that.”

Grant and Hampton, meanwhile, flew to New Orleans from their Seattle homes, then drove north to Vicksburg to meet their sister. Though he has limited mobility and lives in a nursing home in Port Gibson, Tommy Scott — the eldest of Elsia Mae Scott’s eight children — was also able to join his siblings for the Mother’s Day tribute.

Wearing memorial T-shirts with Elsia Mae Scott’s photo on them, the siblings stood in the rain and honored the memory of their late mother — a fiercely independent and religious woman who stayed active until her dying day and always expected excellence from her children.

“She made me want to be the best mom for my children that I could possibly be, because she was the best mom for us,” said Edna Scott.

Growing up alongside four siblings on a rural Claiborne County farm during the Great Depression, Elsia Mae Scott developed a strong work ethic and independent spirit early in life that only grew with age. She married Luster Lee Hampton, and the two eventually had eight children together. After they separated and she moved to South Carolina, Elsia Mae Scott held down three jobs to put food on the table for her eight children, who spent summers with their father in Port Gibson

It was always important to their mother that the children continue to have a strong relationship with their father, said Edna Scott, so much so that they continued to make the summer treks back to Mississippi to visit extended family well after his death in 1983.

Elsia Mae Scott returned to Vicksburg about 30 years ago to be closer to her own siblings, but only after she retired and her youngest child had graduated from high school. Here, she was active in church and community groups and spent much of her free time cooking and gardening. Grant recalled her mother being a master of pies, cakes and all sorts of jellies, jams and other canned goods.

“She used to love to make cha-cha, which are really hot peppers that are canned with cabbage and some other things, and you couldn’t even stay in the house when she was making that stuff,” Grant, now a mother of three children, remembered with a laugh. “She taught me how to cook without measuring. She taught me how to be a mother.”

Along with her love of cooking, Elsia Mae Scott kept up a flower and vegetable gardens each year without fail. Where her home once sat on Coccaro’s Alley — before the Jan. 11 blaze that took her life — a community garden has since sprung up. Neighbors, friends and family members have planted flowers and shrubs on the property, and on Mother’s Day her children added a few more.

“We miss her,” said Ronald Queen, a neighbor since Elsia Mae Scott moved from another Marcus Bottom home on Lane Street about two years ago. “You can tell a flower has been pulled from this garden.”

Elsia Mae Scott’s liveliness and independence were eclipsed only perhaps by her love of God, her children said. As a member of the mother board at Pleasant Green Baptist Church on Bowman Street, she was a respected role model for all the clergy, church deacon Ernest Walker said.

“She always had her white on — white hat and white dress. She supported the pastor with the rules and regulations of the church. She set the standard,” he said. “Mothers of the church are women who have been through some things. And, the way they came through it was the Lord.”

Her continued activity and spiritual faith kept Elsia Mae Scott exceptionally healthy and spry at an advanced age — even healthier than even her own children, said Hampton.

“Even at 84 years old, she wasn’t on a single medication,” he said.

And as to whether or not the children ever urged their mother to give up living alone on Coccaro’s Alley and relocate to a nursing home or assisted living situation: “Oh, no — you didn’t even think about that bringing that up,” Hampton said with a smile. “She wouldn’t hear a word of it.”

Elsia Mae Scott was an active member of the Order of Eastern Star, Ruth Chapter; the Brothers and Sisters of Zion; Christian Home Society; and Mount Alban Union Sisters. Her children who could not make it to Vicksburg Sunday to join their siblings are Inez Richardson of Richmond, Calif., and Linda Jenkins, Luster Lee Hampton Jr. and Ernest Lee Hampton, all of Charleston. She also is survived by 14 grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren.