GRIEF Archives - Ellen Morris Prewitt

My Best Reader has Left Me

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on June 18, 2020. Posted in General, GRIEF, LOVE. 8 Comments

Mother at her 90th birthday party Marguerite Virginia Price Van Hecke died on May 29, 2020, following emergency surgery. Virginia was born on June 9, 1929, on the Road of Remembrance in Jackson, Mississippi, as the second child of Maggie Mae and James Murray Price, a little girl who was to have been named George William. From the start, she never...

That Which Soothes When All Begins to Crumble

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on May 26, 2020. Posted in General, GOD, GRIEF, Writing. 4 Comments

Though I welcomed—after our terror subsided—the stillness of our shelter-in-place life, we who had been circling and circling for years, the last few days I have felt as if I might crumble, my “dust to dust” having become friable, my feet of clay exposed, a descending that was not helped when the priest who understood me and yet encouraged...

A Virus is Not Godzilla

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on May 12, 2020. Posted in General, GRIEF. 4 Comments

A virus is not Godzilla. Its takeover of the world is not inevitable. Nor is a virus an act of God or a hurricane or tornado or anything else we have to passively accept as bigger than ourselves. A virus can be stopped. How? Quit giving it hosts. You can quit giving a virus hosts in two ways. First, you can let the tipping point of your population...

We are Not Experiencing the Same Virus

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on April 28, 2020. Posted in General, GRIEF. 6 Comments

One of the hard things about this time of coronavirus (there are so many) is that people are not in the same place. Not physically, not geographically, not psychologically. Some folks are blissfully learning to make their own pasta while reluctantly training themselves to spend 24 hrs a day in close-company with their spouse. Others, like me, are...

This Week in CV Time

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on April 10, 2020. Posted in General, GRIEF. 8 Comments

It’s hard for me to get anything done. Chores pop up like weasels. After one is completed—there!—the next grins at me, chittering for attention. Each day, I look up only to discover it’s two o’clock in the afternoon, and I need a nap. With Tom’s hip surgery difficulties, I’m performing three jobs: mine, his, and the...

What are We Talking About?

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on April 7, 2020. Posted in General, GRIEF. 8 Comments

What are we talking about during this coronavirus? Is it the same thing we’re always talking about, just folded and stuffed into the container of the virus? What I’m asking is, are you riding your normal hobby horse—Trump has the analytical ability of a third grader; Nancy Pelosi doesn’t have the sense God gave a rock; the main...

Where Go Our Dreams?

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on March 31, 2020. Posted in General, GRIEF. 6 Comments

Today my grief is for the dreams. The coronavirus brings new feelings each day. For me, fear is primary among them. But today, my heart is breaking for those who have built dreams—a fabulous restaurant, their own plumbing business, a profitable bookshop—only to watch it shutter. Closed. No customers. Quiet. I grieve, too, for those who stand...

Surgery in the Time of Coronavirus

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on March 29, 2020. Posted in General, GRIEF. 14 Comments

I sat in the early-morning dark of the hospital parking lot, my phone clutched in my hand. I’d been in the lot since 3:30 am. The charge on the phone—my lifeline to my husband—was running out. No one else was in the lot. A fluorescent streetlight blinked. Was the pain in his leg a blood clot? Was he in danger? My gaze flickered between the...

The Poignancy of Christmas

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on December 22, 2019. Posted in General, GOD, GRIEF. 6 Comments

My brilliant older sister chooses a theme every Christmas. On Christmas Day at dinner, we go round the table and each person says what the theme means to them. We have done this since her daughters (now married or engaged) were too young to hold a knife. She—my older sister—also does a birthday cake for Jesus, ties red ribbons all over the house,...

Two Southern Authors

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on July 16, 2019. Posted in GOD, GRIEF, LOVE. Leave a Comment

Carson McCullers? Eudora Welty? What better company could I ask to be in? Take a minute and read the wonderful review Susan Cushman wrote on THE HART WOMEN. Plus, read all the way to the blog Comments on for more on this gem: “An intergenerational story set in Mississippi, I was intrigued from the first page and finished the entire...