84 - Sepsis Surprise

On June 11, 2024, Nancy J. Benson shocked the hell out of us by dying. She had terminal cancer, yes, but the sepsis — we didn't see that one coming.

Nancy was a writer famous for her annual pages-long Christmas letters which had a mailing list in the hundreds, including friends, family, and a few rando fans who had glommed on over the years. She resisted the typical humble-brag of the genre and instead tackled subjects such as her dubious relationship with Alexa the voice assistant, discovering a pair of black velvet bell-bottoms belonging to her husband, and mundane slice-of-life updates retold with her signature wit. “Teeth have been falling out at an alarming rate around here” began a 1993 caper about the tooth fairy.

The shock of being diagnosed with gastric cancer in August 2022 — she WONDERED why she was burping so much? — was the kick-in-the-pants she needed to launch a blog, thebigc.substack.com, which was about cancer but also funny. The blog has been viewed over 50,000 times.

Nancy was born on December 17, 1955, in Dunkirk, New York, to Jean and Howard Morse. She honed her storytelling skills through Billy Boy Dolly, the hoarse, chatty being whose unique worldview entertained the family on long trips. She graduated as co-valedictorian of Fredonia High School in 1974 but didn’t go to the ceremony, opting instead to spend her senior year as an exchange student in Turkey through the AFS program.

Nancy graduated from one of Colgate University’s first co-ed classes in 1978, where she is photographed in the yearbook wearing a shirt that says A woman’s place is in the house and in the senate. 

Following graduation she moved to Chicago, Illinois, and needed a job she could access on public transportation. This led to a placement with the Social Security Administration, where a training exercise involved being paired with another employee for an icebreaker. She turned to Alan M. Benson and said, “What is the meaning of life?” In 1981, they were married. 

Alan and Nancy have three children whose childhood was shaped by Nancy’s love of writing – they’d spend hours every week in the local library and were required, as has become family lore, to do research and write journal entries in advance of a big family trip to California.

At some point in the 90s the AFS organization tracked down Nancy’s phone number and asked if she would consider hosting an exchange student, which led to several years of sharing their Findlay, Ohio home with teens from around the world. Eventually Nancy’s oldest daughter skipped her own high school graduation to spend a year as an exchange student in Japan.

During their Findlay years, Alan and Nancy were regular members of St. Andrews United Methodist Church and also a fixture on the local social scene. Nancy loved a theme party, once hosting a birthday party for her daughter Natalie where all the food served was green — Nat was a St.-Patrick’s-day baby — and more than one New Year’s Eve party with a “flamingo drop” instead of a ball. She was known for forcing party games upon crowds who were reluctant at first but later appreciated it. 

Nancy joyfully observed daily life.  “We are currently doing structural work on our basement. Word quickly spread about our bed & breakfast accommodations and we now have most of the mouse population of Findlay living there,” she wrote in 2003.

Following retirement, Alan and Nancy spent a month in The Villages, Florida, and accidentally bought a house, so they moved. They were regular members of New Covenant United Methodist Church. Nancy volunteered twice a week at Bargains and Blessings, a thrift store, which suited her — she was a believer in the ol’ one-man’s-trash philosophy. 

Nancy chronicled her family’s lives in elaborate, narrative-driven Shutterfly photo albums and wrote paragraph-long text messages to family and friends that were always funnier and more clever than texts needed to be. At the end of her life, the 83 installments of her cancer blog became a crucial way for her to reflect on her illness and she was proud of the work, always telling new readers to make sure they started at the beginning with post #1. In the hours before she died, Nancy indicated that she wanted “Sepsis was a surprise” to be the title of her final blog post. An hour later, when she could no longer speak, she pointed with a shaky hand to a piece of paper with the alphabet scrawled in Sharpie marker. She wanted an edit. Shorter, punchier. Sepsis surprise. 

Nancy will be dearly missed by her husband of 43 years, Alan; her mother, Jean Morse; her beloved children, Sarah, Natalie, and Elisa; her grandchildren, Rae, Griffin, and Simon; her sister, Elizabeth Morse; and her large circle of friends who are grateful her words live on.