I Still Can’t Say Goodbye

One of the challenges of writing and posting every day, or in my case every day Monday through Friday, is coming up with something to write about. This didn’t used to be a problem when I was back in the political wars. I stopped that years ago. And I’m glad I did.

I mentioned last week that I don’t want this blog to be just about my current struggles and re-learning to walk and take care of myself. Yes, those are the thoughts that consume me most of the day, and frequently in the night.

The struggle then is to find other topics. I found one today, but I don’t want to write about it.

One of the harshest things of my current challenge has been that I have not had time to grieve the loss of my mother. She passed away on October 25, 2024 after having fallen and broken her leg and hip.

As you read (or certainly should have) last Monday, I got sick the following week, then I was off to Connecticut, then home and to the hospital.

More than once during therapy at the previous facility, I would have waves of emotion when I would explain that, among other things, that I had not had time to grieve.

I’m not sure that I still have.

A friend sent me a series of books titled Journeying through Grief, written by Kenneth Hauck, the founder of Stephen’s Ministries. Those helped through the process.

Still, I’m not sure that I’ve faced the reality that my Mother is gone.

Peggy Pearl Russell was born in 1930 and grew up in Cedar Bluff, Virginia. She was the daughter of Reese and Sena (Pyrtle) Russell. Reese was a WWI veteran who was hit with nerve gas in France. I tell part of his story in my stage play Clean Dry Socks: Diary of a Doughboy.

Reese died while my mother was a senior in high school. That experience we shared in common as my father passed between my sophomore and junior years of college.

After high school, she moved to Giles County and began working at Celanese Corporation, a textile plant. She would work there for almost 50 years before retiring. Then she went to work at the local hospital for more than 15 years.

Along the way she faithfully attended church, taught Sunday School, loved her family and loved my father through some difficult years that I’m not ready to write about.

My father passed in 1978. That’s another story. But my Mother was a young widow. She continued to support me and made sure that I was able to finish my college education.

Here’s where some Southwest Virginia culture comes in. Not really, but it makes a good story.

My father’s sister passed in 1983. In 1984, my mother married my father’s sister’s husband, or the man I had known for years as my uncle. Do the math, there’s nothing hinky about it.

Together they shared their adventures, their love for travel, and a strange love for flea markets which eventually led to them opening their own discount store in our home town. While the building has been sold, it still bears the sign “C&P Discount.”

My stepfather/uncle passed in 2016. Mother downsized into an apartment where she was happily independent. She continued to serve in the church as treasurer and as a Sunday School teacher. She loved to read. She loved to give.

And, perhaps because she knew something I didn’t, she would always ask about my back.

In late 2020, she fell and broke her leg. Of course my brother and I felt that this would lead to the end. But she had a remarkable recovery and returned to all of her prior activities except for driving.

In October of 2024, as I may have mentioned, she fell again, breaking the other leg and shoulder.

My brother and cousins discussed the fact that this time, she was just ready to go home.

On a Friday morning, with my brother holding her hand, she passed peacefully.

The service was what she wanted and what she had planned for years. I hope that we did her justice.

There are so many more stories to tell, and perhaps one day I will tell them.

I miss her.

I’ve told my brother that there have been times during this struggle that I just wanted to call her up and talk with her.

Then again, she would only worry. She was good at that as well.

It still doesn’t quite seem real.

Maybe it will when I return home and see the marker on her grave. Maybe not.

Maybe it will never seem real.

The thought of going home seems different now. She was the last of her generation in our family. Sure I can stay with my step-siblings/cousins, but it won’t be the same.

I’m just not ready to say goodbye.

I Still Can’t Say Goodbye

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