Mrs. Fulton was deeply affected by her husband's passing. Any mention of him caused her to be overwhelmed by grief; every March she cried at church and in bed. Ruth hated her mother's sorrow and viewed it as a weakness. For her, the greatest taboos in life were crying in front of people and showing expressions of pain. She reminisced, "I did not love my mother; I resented her cult of grief". Because of this, the psychological effects on her childhood were profound, for "in one stroke she experienced the loss of the two most nourishing and protective people around her—the loss of her father at death and her mother to grief".