Many of you already know that the past month has been hell for me. My beautiful mother, Beth, passed away suddenly on June 27th, 2024. I want to share a few words about the woman she was, and the weeks leading up to the unimaginable.
We received my mother’s cancer diagnosis eight weeks prior. She was always the enviable picture of health, beauty, and energy, even at 63. No one could have imagined that the back pain that emerged last fall was the medically mysterious, aggressive killer that it was. By the time she had her first biopsy, it was diffuse. She didn’t let us use the word “metastatic,” because she thought it sounded too grim.
I choose to understand these weeks, however short, brutal, and utterly heartbreaking, as a gift to our family.
Petty disputes of the past faded to nothing in seconds. The thing that was always true, good, and beautiful – our mother’s love – was brought into sharp relief. Dad, Danny, Mom, and I refocused and regrounded together as a family. Each of us, in those final months, created and shared some of our best memories with Mom. We said what needed to be said. We forgave. And, cast into the darkness of tragedy, we looked for the light together. We remain devastated. We grieve to the bone. I don’t know how to be a mother without my own mother. She gave me everything and then some. But I find peace in the memory of her most perfect gift: her example. And I have resolved to emulate her excellence, grace, generosity, determination, and sense of justice all the days of my life.
Immediately after Mom died, the women of my hometown descended into our home like a swarm of friendly worker bees. There wasn't a need unmet or a wish ungranted. Our home quickly filled with pimento cheese sandwiches and hydrangeas. I say with confidence that she is grateful. This diluvian outpouring of love reflects a core part of my mother’s identity: her unyielding devotion to her friends. To be a friend to Beth was to be family. Her friends became my mothers, and my friends became her daughters. The same goes for my brother; the marines she brought into our home every year over the holidays are yet another testament to her effusive generosity. The void she leaves behind aches, but I find sweet solace in this community of people. She did, too.
That these past few weeks have felt so much like a hive is ironic because Beth’s nickname was “Bee-Bee,” which had started as a joke between friends: Beth the busy bee, always flitting to and fro between her businesses, her parties, countries and even continents. She embraced the symbol of the bumblebee and filled her home with it. The bee traditionally represents hard work, community, prosperity, and, well, fertility. Mom’s multiple businesses, expansive network of friends, beautiful home, and rapidly – like, very rapidly – expanding family are a testament to just how fitting her symbol is.
She’s been leaving us with signs of her presence in a very literal sense. On the day that Mom passed, we were loading our (what feels like) millions of tiny children into the minivan to go sleep at my godmother’s house. Because we have millions of tiny children, my eldest has to crawl through a tunnel of carseats in order to get to the back of the car. In pristine condition, placed in the center of her path, Mary Helen saw a perfectly preserved bumblebee lying on the carpet. There’s never been a bee in my car to my knowledge, nor do we leave our windows open. The synchronicity – which my ever intuitive mother always loved to point out to me – is hard to ignore.
Speaking of Mary Helen, she keeps telling me with sweet, childlike faith when she sees me cry: “It’s okay, Mama, Bee Bee is with Jesus and Mama Mary in Heaven.” I know she’s right. On July 4th, my parents’ anniversary, as we were watching the fireworks, Clementine threw her hands to the sky and exclaimed “BEE-BEE, HEAVEN NOW!” I know we will all remember Bee Bee the way she lived, and how she will be in God’s kingdom: lighting up a room, laughing, and cuddling her precious grandchildren. The ones I never got to meet are with her now.
Three years ago, a friend from Budapest called me up to offer a writing fellowship with the Danube Institute. For three years, I have postponed. I kept getting pregnant, to be frank. The timing wasn’t right. This year, though, at my mother’s urging, we accepted. Our last text messages are full of listings for homes to rent in Budapest. She was going to come with us after her last round of chemotherapy.
I have no choice but to press on without her, buoyed by the intuition that she’d want us to go. I’ll be writing about family policy and, more generally, how public beauty can play a role in supporting a family-friendly society. Among her many talents, my mother was an interior designer. Her impeccable taste led her to Europe many times. I will do everything in my power to uphold her devotion to beauty and to family.
So, we are going to Budapest. The whole family. Welcome, y’all, to Roy House in Budapest.
It’s a new chapter. My work here will change and adapt as a consequence. I will continue to post practical essays on managing a growing family, and I may venture into more creative things, too. Photography, for instance. My artistic side was the part of me that I think pleased Mom the most.
I will continue to think and write about womanhood and motherhood, a choice that was always inspired by Mom, but I want nothing but distance between my work and that of the ascendant, right-coded misogyny that currently dominates the media space. This is not who I am. I owe everything that is good about me to the love of a good woman. I cannot abide the sneering condescension or outright hatred any longer. So, I’ve renamed the podcast, too. I initially used the word “girlboss” with playful irony, but it has taken on an embittered tone in the discourse since. I don’t like that it is used to aggressively minimize women with any talent at all, and I regret any role I might have had in tacitly diminishing the work of energetic and enterprising women everywhere. For better or worse, memes flatten reality. They no longer interest me.
The podcast is now called “The Female of the Species,” based on Rudyard Kipling’s poem.
“And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.” (Matthew 27:50-51a).
The profound significance of the tearing of the veil is explained in glorious detail in Hebrews. The things of the temple were shadows of things to come, and they all ultimately point us to Jesus Christ. He was the veil to the Holy of Holies, and through His death the faithful now have free access to God.
The theological implications of the moment of Christ’s death are clear enough. But I also think that symbol goes further: the death of an intimate beloved rips the fabric of reality for those left behind. There was Mom, and now there is after Mom. I don’t know what is to come. I love her more than tongue can tell. I miss her. I’m also anticipative and optimistic. Grief is strangely motivating, however sorely immiserating. The drive to compensate for years of haughty indignation and graceless ingratitude as a daughter is overwhelming. I have to live up to her love. I will honor her.
Eternal rest grant unto her, O, Lord. May she see Christ’s face forever, and may the souls of all the faithfully departed through the mercy of God rest in peace.
Thank you for your prayers.
xx Helen & family
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