Greetings,
My name is Casey Ellis and I’m the son of Carol Ellis, known to you as carolanne. I’m deeply sorry to have to inform you that my mother passed away last month on November 5th. She was about a month shy of her 77th birthday.
As you can imagine, this has been a traumatic time for me. My mother meant more to me than I can say and figuring out a future without her has been difficult to say the least.
Apologies that it’s taken me this long to inform you; it was something I thought of right away but there have been long periods of mental/emotional paralysis. The community here at Daily Kos was very important to my mom. She didn’t have that many friends and I know she just cherished her time here. It was always something that made me particularly happy since, many years ago, I’d mentioned an article I’d read about Daily Kos and that’s what sparked her interest.
I should say I’m not sure if I’m doing any of this right. Daily Kos is largely unfamiliar to me but I see that my mom had some sort of editorial position with this and one other group so this seems to make sense, but I am sorry if I’m getting anything wrong. I will probably also send out some individual messages to people she seemed to be in more direct contact with.
Speaking of things I’m not sure of, when it was clear my mother wasn’t going to survive more than a day or so, some friends of mine very generously put together a GoFundMe campaign to aid me in seeking therapy and grief counselling. I work as an adjunct college professor at several schools and don’t have health insurance. A family member suggested I share a link to that campaign here, so I’m doing that but, to be clear, doing so somewhat embarrasses me and I’m terribly sorry if it’s inappropriate in any way. If this is any help, I do not plan on continuing here. As soon as I get the sense the community is aware my mom has passed, I’ll probably be gone. www.gofundme.com/…
However, if anyone would like to establish contact, perhaps hear more about my mother and her life, I’d be delighted. My email address is caseyellis66@gmail.com. You can also message me here although, as I mentioned, at a certain point I’ll likely stop checking. Finally, I wanted to share what I’m planning as an ongoing memorial to my mom. Some of you might have known (although perhaps not since she didn’t like to talk about it) that my mom was a YA and children’s book author. I’ve started doing reviews/tributes to her work on Goodreads and I’m including links to the two I’ve done so far. www.goodreads.com/… www.goodreads.com/…
Thank you so much for your time, consideration and, above all, for the friendship and kindness you gave my mother.
Very best wishes,
Casey
