Publisher column: Thanks, Mom

By Randy Capps

I think when you’re a writer, nothing’s real until you type it out. Let’s see if that’s true.

My mom has passed away. Or at least she will have by the time anyone outside this office reads this. My family dynamic is too complicated for this space, so let’s just say that we had a friendly, if not particularly close, relationship.

She and my dad married young. So much so that I was on hand for my father’s high school graduation.

I don’t recall much of the first four years of my life when they were married, but I’m guessing they were too much alike to stay together, so she moved to Virginia.

I did, too, when I was seven after a nasty court battle that I got to read about later. After three years, I moved back to South Carolina, and my mother and I began a long-distance relationship that lasted the rest of her life.

She was barely five feet tall, but was tough as nails. She was a sheriff’s deputy in Virginia — I remember a newspaper photo of her sitting in the front seat of a car with a bullet hole through the window — and anyone who has seen us together knows that I have her eyes and, when I still had it, her hair.

She was fiercely proud of me, and she especially loved the fact that I was the first person on my father’s side of the family to graduate from college.

She endured some tragedy in her later years, with her last husband being killed while working as a civilian contractor in Afghanistan.

She bore it all as she did everything else, with grit and sarcasm — traits that very much remind me of myself.

I talked to her a few weeks ago on her birthday. She sounded tired, and told me about the health problems she’d been having. She was looking forward to being able to drive again, since she didn’t like being shuttled around.

My last words to her were, “I love you, too, Mom,” which is pretty good as final words go. I’m grateful to have that moment, as I am for the woman who helped give me life.

Thanks, mom.