My Hero Has Died.  My Grief is Manifest.  My tears fall silently down my cheeks.  My heart is heavy, my Gratitude is Great.  The One and Only Rush Limbaugh has returned to the arms of God, from whom he had Talent on Loan.  Rush always used to say that he “was doing what he was born to do”, and that is true.  And he said of us, his listeners and supporters, that we were “born to listen”.  And he spoke the Truth. He was our Anchor Man, and now we have lost our anchor.

I first became a listener, and a big fan, in 2001.  My boyfriend and I were in his car, on the way to dinner, when he put Rush’s show on the radio.  My first thought was “You’re not going to make me listen to Rush Limbaugh?!”.  Well, it only took a few minutes of listening, and I was totally “converted”.  I remember thinking how funny he was, and how his thoughts about the current news were spot-on.  I loved all the parodies, too.  My boyfriend is now my husband, and we are both Rush 24/7 members, and we get the excellent Limbaugh Letter.  I am on my second Limbaugh Institute sweatshirt-I wore the first one out.

Rush called himself the Truth Detector, Doctor of Democracy.   He originated the phrase “living rent-free in their brains”.  He also called himself a “lovable little fuzzball” He was those things, and more.  I just loved this picture of Rush and his Abyssinian cat, Punkin.

He was our Rock, who told us that when it was Time to Panic, he would tell us.  And now, that time has come.  It might be Time to Panic.

Grief is mostly foreign to me.  Maybe I am a hard-hearted, bitter woman, but I have rarely felt grief.  I wept at my grandmother’s funeral, when I was young.  My mother was a first-class witch, and I cheered when she died (really-I was sick myself, at the time, and when my sister called me to tell me she had died-I sang to myself “Ding dong, the witch is dead, which old witch, the wicked witch, Ding dong the wicked witch is dead”).  When my father died, of Alzheimer’s, I was faintly glad, since he had been gone for quite a while already, and didn’t seem real to me.  Neither parent had a funeral, and my sister, bless her heart, took charge of the cremations and ash-scattering.

My first husband and I grieved when our cat, Flash, died in the mid-1980s, on Memorial Day weekend.  We both were teary-eyed for some time, as she had been a wonderful part of our family.  The house seemed empty without her, since we had no children.  My second cat died on my lap, at the vet clinic.  She had been with me for 17 of her 18 years, and I grieved for her.

But my relationship with Rush was much different.  I never met him in person, but I was very fortunate in having been able to speak with him on his radio show in 2005.  I was ecstatic when I actually got through to him, after having dialed multiple times.  I was at work at the time, and my boss never found out what I had done, since I had a padded cubicle which was very private, and no one came by to see me.  Rush was a very gracious host, and we got a laugh about my call, which had to do with car-free Leftists looking for transportation after a natural disaster.  Rush loved my story about how I discovered him and became a listener, and a follower.  My heart went pitty-pat, and you couldn’t wipe the grin off my face for the next week.

After the Islamist terrorist attacks of 2001, Rush came out with his “Club G’itmo” line of t-shirts and hats.  I wore mine proudly, even in the lair of the Enemy.  When Obama was elected in 2008, I swore I’d wear my G’itmo hat every Friday while he was in office.  I got away with that for about six months, before my boss made me take it off.  Here is a picture of me, in 2006, at the Democrat Party booth in Albany, New York, on July 4.

The World will be a different place without the wise words of Rush Limbaugh.  He was our Rock, our Hero, our sounding-board when we were afraid that our Country was being lost in front of our eyes.  We loved him, and supported him through all the trials of his life.  We listened avidly to his stories of his own family; we supported him through his drug addiction trials, and his deafness.  We marveled at how he didn’t miss a beat, when he had his cochlear implant so he could continue on the radio.  We rejoiced with him, when he finally found Kathryn, the love of his life.

And when, in January of 2020, he told us about his diagnosis of Stage IV lung cancer, we became faint, and we worried for him.  I knew that Rush would get the best treatment that the American medical care system could provide, and he did, because, even though his doctors told him that, without treatment his life-expectancy could be measured in months, he was able to be with us for over a year.  We all rejoiced, when Rush was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Donald Trump (who was a friend of his before he became President).

Today, I, and millions of other listeners, fans, friends, relatives, and supporters of Our Hero, Rush Limbaugh, grieve for him.  And the world is sadder, and quieter, and a bit less hopeful without Rush.  My thoughts are muddled, my brain is fried, as I contemplate life, going forward without Rush Limbaugh.  What will we do without his words, his support, his encouragement?  How can America be the same place for us?  How can our great country survive without its best Champion?

There was no greater Champion of America, its history, its Exceptionalism, its Constitution, its Founding and Founders, than Rush Limbaugh.  No one, but No One, was as avid a Champion of America.  He and Kathryn wrote a series of children’s books about American History, and I bought them when they were released.  Rush made absolutely sure that all the historical facts in his books were perfectly true.  He wanted today’s children, who suffer from the indoctrination of the public schools, to have the Real History of their country.  He wanted everyone to know what a Miracle our country is.

Rush Limbaugh was as miraculous as the Country he loved.  We will mourn his passing forever.  But as long as his radio show recordings are found in the Limbaugh Broadcast Museum, Rush will never be gone from us.  He will live forever, in our hearts and our minds.  I will always be a RushBabe.  You can bet, Rush will live rent-free in my heart as long as I live.

I found this quote in a very unusual place, but it just fits today.  From More Fruits of Solitude, by William Penn:

Death is but crossing the world, as friends do the seas; they live in one another still.  For they must needs be present, that love and live in that which is omnipresent.  In this divine glass, they see face to face; and their converse is free, as well as pure.  This is the comfort of friends, that though they may be said to die, yet their friendship and society are, in the best sense, ever present, because immortal.

Rest in Peace, Oh Great One, My Friend, Rush Limbaugh!