It’s a weird thing, this writing your mama’s obituary.
It’s not the writing it part that’s odd…the older I get, the more obituaries I’ve been honored to write. It always went without saying that I’d write hers too.
The writing it part was easy.
What’s strange is that her obituary is the first big thing I’ve written that she won’t read.
Aside from the volume of letters to my husband, and those embarrassing junior high journals that have long since gone up in ash, in my fifty-one years, my mother has read almost every single word I have written, and smiled and said, “I like that, honey.”
Because don’t our mamas love our words?
She taught me to talk, she taught me to wrap my chubby little fingers around a pencil and scratch out my letters, and then she taught me how to make those same letters into sounds and how to follow those sounds across a page and grow into someone who loves words and books and reading and stringing sentences together…
She always loved what I wrote.
In school, I’d ask her to review my research papers.
Once it became evident English and writing were going to be my jam, she’d have ME look over HER research papers as she pursued her teaching degree, and she loved the little comments and notations I’d scribble in the margins of her handwritten pages before she’d type it all up and print if off on our old dot matrix printer.
During my college classes, I’d read my pieces to her over the phone, and she’d offer suggestions and tidbits on what worked and what might be changed.
When my kids were young, I kept a family blog about our farm adventures and the growing up years.
She loved that little blog.
She’d tell her teacher friends about it and they’d follow our shenanigans, and she’d post sweet little comments on my page, even adopting one of my taglines: “It’s always an adventure!”
She’d pull our page up on her old computer in her classroom and let our soundtrack play on…those songs became her favorite.
We had a book we were going to write together: The Cheesecake Connoisseurs. We developed that plan on her 69th birthday, traveling to our favorite cabin and eating dinner at our favorite steakhouse where they served her up a complimentary slice of cheesecake with a birthday card, and we determined it was the best cheesecake we’d ever had as we gave it a restaurant-critic infused review, marveling at its creaminess and perfect amount of richness. We changed our tune the next day though, when lunch brought another slice of cheesecake, and we determined that that one might indeed be the best slice of cheesecake we’d ever enjoyed. On the two-hour trip home, we had the outline of our book hammered out in our shared iPhone notes, and a plan to travel around the country and do reviews of all the cheesecake we’d sample.
I might still write that one. We sure did love us some cheesecake.
She adored my book, Annie Spruce, not only because she and her dog Ribsy were such central figures in Annie’s story, but because that book gave her the opportunity to tell everyone she knew that ya knowwww, my daughter is a published author. She carried my little author cards around in her wallet, and one day I caught her passing one across the fabric cutting table to the nice lady at JoAnn Fabrics.
My mama was my biggest fan.
My mama believed in me and was proud of everything I did.
Well, maybe not always…we had some bumpy years along the way, but the thing about my mama is she never let the bumps ruin the ride.
She let the bumps be part of the journey and sometimes, oftentimes, we’d relive them and laugh.
Like the time we drove from Michigan to Alaska together, way back when her only daughter was moving four thousand miles away from her. We had one big fight, we almost killed my dog accidentally with his sedatives, we narrowly averted a tornado, and we nearly dropped the suspension on my Olds Achieva by not knowing how to navigate the frost heaves between Tok and Glennallen. She was miserable in all those moments and I’m sure she may have regretted her decision many times those six days to come along for the ride.
But do you know that over the next two and a half decades, every time we’d talk about that trip, we’d marvel at how HUGE the Canadian Rockies were to a couple flatlanders like us; how it was other worldly to encounter large game right alongside the highways; and we’d always, every single time, laugh about all those bumps and tears and frost heaves.
We were both better for having had that adventure.
These past several years have been full of bumps and heaves and some rocky road too, but to my mama, it was just part of her journey.
She smiled, she laughed, she may not have liked the road sometimes, but she was always along for the ride.
And always, she loved to read what I wrote.
As daughters, don’t the words of our mothers always linger in our ears and on our hearts?
Her eyes would tear up and she’d smile and say, “Yeah. I like that. I like that a lot, honey.”
So I read her obituary one more time this morning after it was published, drinking coffee from one of her favorite mugs, and I sat outside and told the LORD that I am thankful He is taking care of her now. That I am thankful her streets are no longer riddled with potholes but are gleaming and golden.
That I have so much peace she got to bypass all of the congested and ugly traffic jams she knew were just up the road and instead just had an easy exit and was Home.
And that even though she wouldn’t read what I had written about her this last time, that I hoped my words, and my life, and my time with her —bumps and all, that I hoped she knew that I was glad that all these years, I got to be along for the ride.
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“Someday when the pages of my life end, I know that you will be one of the most beautiful chapters.” —Unknown
“This is the day that the LORD has made; I will rejoice and be glad in it.” Psalm 118:24
In honor of Poppy. 1954 – 2025
Cassandra Rankin 