Zella Dixon, 84, of Hixson, has a simple explanation for how she survived the deaths of two sons. Adversity, she says, can make one bitter or it can make one better.
View other columns by Mark Kennedy
Experience is the best teacher, it’s said. Yet some experiences come at a cost.
In March, this column featured a chat with Zella Dixon, an 84-year-old Hixson resident who has outlived two of her children. One son died at age 23 in a car crash in Miami. Then, 17 years later, another of Dixon’s sons died of a brain aneurysm at age 42.
I got a letter from Zella a few weeks ago with the sad news that her husband of 67 years, Sherwin, is near death. Could be days. Could be months.
Meanwhile, Zella is schooled in the rituals of grief. She told me she was writing an open letter to Sherwin and that she wanted to share it with me.
“I wanted a legacy instead of an obituary,” she wrote in a handwritten cover note attached to her typed letter to Sherwin. “Sherwin is a man who went about doing good all the time. He has been an unsung hero to so many.”