Among close friends and family, Carol Norris was known as a survivor. A number of serious medical problems threatened her life on more than one occasion, but she was determined to live, they said.
“She was determined to stay alive, no matter what the doctors told her,” said Joe Noah, who said Norris was like a mother to him. “Her response was always, ‘I’m going to fight.’”
Carol Laughinghouse Norris of Marietta, died Aug. 29 from complications of lung cancer. She was 64.
A private memorial gathering is planned Thursday at the home she shared with her son, Glenn Heath. SouthCare Cremation & Funeral Society was in charge of arrangements.
As a teen, kidney problems forced the New Bern, N.C. native to drop out of high school; but after she married Norris was determined to earn her GED, said her sister, Connie Nelson.
“She even went to college,” said Nelson, who lives in Wilmington, N.C. “She liked psychology, and she would have been good at it, if she’d been able to finish.”
Newly divorced and a single mom, Norris had to suspend her studies but she didn’t abandon her desire to help others.
“She’d push all of her worries and cares aside and make time for other people,” said Noah, who has been a friend of Norris’ son for 30 years. “It didn’t matter what she had going on.”
Heath said his mother had a major medical setback in the early-‘90s, not long after she remarried. She was diagnosed with arsenic poisoning and as a result couldn’t walk.
“But she learned to walk again,” Heath said. “And little by little she got better.”
She married again in the late-‘90s, and that union took her from North Carolina to Georgia and then to Pennsylvania, before her health took another bad turn, her son said. Heath said his mother had been away for a year before he brought her back to Atlanta so he could care for her.
“She was bedridden and we just didn’t know if she was going to get better,” he said. “But she was determined. She would get better little by little and she’d be able to do more and more.”
Heath said Norris eventually decided she was strong enough to live on her own, and last year applied for her driver’s license, even though she hadn’t driven in 10 years.
“She passed the test and was getting her independence back,” he said. “I was completely floored. I was happy for her, but floored at the same time.”
But more bad news was around the corner, he said. Earlier this year she was diagnosed with end-stage lung cancer. Heath said his mother was given a couple of months to live, but she willed herself to beat that prediction.
“She motivated me,” he said. “I looked at her and thought that if she could go through all of this, I can make it too.”
In addition to her son and sister, Norris is survived by her brother, Billy Laughinghouse of New Bern, N.C.
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