The doctor had given her six months to live. Mary had to make a decision to move her mother from Upstate New York, the place she loved so dearly to Massachusetts so that her sister could take care of her. The six months had come so quickly and her mother had only hours to live. Mary starts to relive her life going back to her childhood from the time they left Alabama going to Upstate New York on the "Bean Bus".

When The Pain Remains is a true story of one family chance to escape the hardship of the south on a migrant bus going north to pick green beans for the season , little did Mary know her family would never return to Alabama after the season was over, when her brother becomes sick and unable to travel on the migrant bus back to Alabama