My mother, Nancy Elizabeth Page Lipscomb Holstad, died one year ago today on August 5, 2024 in Knoxville, Tennessee. Her funeral took place on August 11, several days later. Despite being nearly a century old, it was a bit of a shock as she lived alone in her own condo, had been slowing down but was a self-sufficient widow until recently, and it came about due to a bizarre accident/fall in late June, something I’d literally warned her to beware of and careful about just two weeks before.

Gretchen and I were and remain devastated for many reasons and this year has been the worst of our lives, also for many years though a major part is as Executor living 800 miles away and with my own bad health, it’s been logistically difficult at best to attend to the Estate and getting it probated and closed, though I don’t think that’s far off. There are many other issues and many questions and Mother’s death was not pleasant for her or anyone. It’s hard to get closure when it seems impossible.

Mom was born on January 12, 1930 in Tampa, Florida, but grew up in Savannah, Georgia. She moved around the southeast a lot as a young adult, in demand from employers due to her expertise, yet she oddly moved to Buffalo, where she met my late father, Vernon F Holstad, who’d recently moved there from Chicago after growing up in Iowa. They married, moved to Boston and there I was born.

My parents were married close to 50 years when my father died at my house in Chattanooga in 2013. Shortly thereafter, Mom decided to move back to Knoxville, where she and Dad had left to join me down the road, after having lived there some 30 years. She missed her friends — it was that simple. We understood, but it was difficult because by then my own health had been permanently compromised so visiting each other was rare despite being less than two hours apart.

Mom and Gretchen became very close over the years and we’re glad for that opportunity. Mom and I spent a lot of time on the phone during her last year especially, talking about family, health, death, memories, sports, and more. I wish I’d had more time to talk with her but I’m glad we were able to do so more frequently and substantively over that last year.

Mom loved people, loved to talk, enjoyed classical and religious music, loved baseball and football, loved her family, missed seeing her siblings and my cousins as she aged, loved travel and loved playing puzzles. She was loved by many though I think she became a bit lonely toward the end. She had been a widow for over a decade and missed my father more than anyone could know. I’m proud she did so well on her own for so long late in life because she had not lived alone in nearly half a century.

I have many regrets about a lot of things in life and not getting opportunities to spend time with her in later years is very high up there. And I wish her final circumstances could have been better but as has been reinforced relentlessly, life’s not always fair, often simply isn’t. I hope to get the Estate settled soon and will seek closure, even as we continue to ask questions about her life and death and legacy and as we continue to remember her with great love and even as we still miss her tremendously. I just wanted to spend a few minutes remembering my mother on the one year anniversary of her death. I like to think of she and my father as somehow reunited in some other dimension now, much like they’d believed, and if so, they’re very happy with where this is and how things are. They deserve that.

RIP Mother. We love and miss you so very much.

Scott & Gretchen