dpThe deaths of her parents are recounted at length in Lindsey Graham’s memoir, My Story. Florence (the dad) and Millie (the mom) did work hard to keep their bar afloat, creating a community for its patrons. They did live in the back room as a tight-knit family. Millie got sick in the mid-1970s, not long after the young Lindsey enrolled at the University of South Carolina—where, incidentally, he benefited from in-state, or government-subsidized, tuition. Darline was 11 at the time.
What happened next was heartbreaking. Out of nowhere, Millie started complaining of chronic fatigue and nausea, and a doctor misdiagnosed the problem as menopause. But soon the symptoms worsened, and a second doctor diagnosed her with stage-four cancer. The very young Darline was informed by Lindsey and their father that her mother was dying, and was “distraught,” the book says.
Anyone with any humanity will empathize with the deep sadness of Lindsey’s account: the sudden and arbitrary crashing in of mortality on what only yesterday was blissful togetherness. The awareness that a loved one is staring into the abyss, all alone. The agonizing realization of how fleeting it all is, of our mysterious lack of control over our own fates, of the inexorable certainty—and seeming permanence—of death.
