Mary Russell- The Woman Who Couldn’t Stop Smiling
Every time you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful things
Mother Teresa
Today’s note honors the memory of Mary Russell, a.k.a. The Woman Who Couldn’t Stop Smiling, who passed away on March 21, 2012. As many of you may recall, that summer her family created a fundraiser to raise money for Thymoma research, a rare cancer that receives no support from the National Cancer Institute. How well did they do? Very well, thanks to some very generous contributors, including many readers from The Marginal Prophet.
The Third Annual Miles4Mary bike/run/walk will take place this Saturday, July 12, 2014. Please visit the site, and if you can, please help. In Mary’s honor, I am reposting the April 20, 2012 Marginal Prophet post titled, “Mary Russell.” I hope you enjoy it.
On October 19, 2011 I wrote, “The Woman Who Couldn’t Stop Smiling looked fantastic. Over a Friday lunch of soups and salads at Lou’s Restaurant in Hanover, NH, she proudly told of the joys of raising three kids, and the excitement of supporting her husband while his successful career took him from Connecticut to the Philippines and back. Looking at her eyes, you could tell she was happy to be there.
You would never know that just days before, she had completed yet another brutal round of chemotherapy.
The WWCSS has thymoma, an extremely rare form of cancer that affects the thymus gland…Only about 500 people in the U.S. are presently diagnosed with the disease.
The WWCSS never missed a beat. She wasn’t going to let a little thing like cancer spoil her weekend. She laughed a lot, shared many stories, and enjoyed her glasses of wine. During a toast on our Friday night dinner, the slightly inebriated group promised to reconvene somewhere in Italy in October 2013. I was sitting next to the WWCSS, and the look in her eyes said it all.
She’s planning on being there.”
Only a person as vibrant and strong as the WWCSS could turn a hospital stay into a comedy routine. Her self-deprecating sense of humor left her nurses in more stitches than the ones they had just dressed. Doctors walked away with tears in their eyes, more often from laughing at one of her jokes than from delivering bad news. Despite being no bigger than a bamboo shoot, the WWCSS had the charisma of a Kennedy, and the presence of Mother Teresa. As far as she was concerned, it was her job to make those caring for her feel better, not the other way around.
As her condition took a turn for the worse, her husband moved heaven and earth to gather up their three grown children. One was away on a mission for Habitat for Humanity, which speaks volumes about the values her parents bestowed. Surrounded at her bedside by her husband and children, the WWCSS gave one last smile, took one last breath, and passed away peacefully.
There’s a tired old joke that says the number of people who show up at your funeral is dependent on the weather. In that’s the case, then that day in Hartford, CN must have been as bright and sunny as one of her smiles. Over 1,000 people came to celebrate her special life. As her grateful husband of twenty-eight years later recalled, you know she had an effect on people when dozens of her children’s friends, who she loved as if they were her own, showed up to say their goodbyes.
Rest in peace, Mary Thomson Russell. I will never forget your smile.
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