Kennedy: Tender letter to a dying husband

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.
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.
photo 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."

By way of biography, 86-year-old Sherwin Dixon is a baseball player of some note, having played to the AAA-level in the St. Louis Cardinals' minor league organization. He never stuck in the big leagues - his career was interrupted by the Korean conflict. He played baseball for a Marine team for his entire enlistment, a turn of events he would later say probably saved his life. He still occasionally gets a letter from a fan who remembers his prowess on the diamond more than 60 years ago.

After baseball, Sherwin settled into a 30-year career as manager of a J.C. Penney department store. He later ran a laundromat and stayed fit by participating in the Senior Olympics.

Let Zella's letter take the story from there:

I am here watching my husband, Sherwin Cody Dixon, sleep peacefully. Sherwin will soon be leaving a legacy of gratitude and thankfulness for his 86 years of life on earth.

Sherwin's greatest joy was to talk and counsel with fatherless boys. He would give them jobs to do and play catch with them in the parking lot and tell them they were the future leaders and needed to learn and study hard. He wanted them to be the very best; to be honest and worthy of this great country - and to themselves - as they grew up.

Sherwin was also a great humanitarian, a giver and counselor for those in need. Many people he gave to generously, (yet) they will never know who their benefactor was. He made everyone feel so special, always seeing the good.

Sherwin's love for the Lord Jesus Christ and for his family has been the most important part of his life. His last gift will be the donation of his body to the East Tennessee State University medical school so that young medical students can learn the healing process.

Sherwin, I will always cherish the 67 years I have had with you. As you break the bonds of this Earth and go for your final home run, our bond of love will never be broken. So, for now, I will say, "Goodnight Sweetheart," I'll see you in the morning.

My love always,

Zella

As a coda to her letter to Sherwin, Zella added a tender passage from the writings of Henry Scott Holland, a 19th-century divinity professor at the University of Oxford:

"Death is nothing at all;

I have only slipped away into the next room.

I am I and you are you; whatever we were to each other, we are still.

***

Call me by my old familiar name;

speak to me in the easy way we always used.

Put no difference in your tone;

wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.

***

Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes together.

Play, smile, think of me, pray for me.

Let my name be ever the household word that it always was.

Let it be spoken without effort,

without a trace of shadow."

***

Everyone.

As we negotiate an uncertain world, let us find our authentic selves in the tender stories within the walls of our own homes and cradled in the folds of our hearts.

Contact Mark Kennedy at mkennedy@timesfreepress.com or call him at 423-757-6645.

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