I’m lying in Mom’s bed. It’s 5 a.m. on Sunday morning.
Exactly 48 hours earlier, I was on an early morning treadmill before our Philosophy workshop at the MEA Santa Fe ranch campus when I got a call from Dad. My 88-year-old mom—who had lived more than a decade with Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF)—was on the floor of her bedroom. The first responders weren’t able to resuscitate her.
Now, after two nights sleeping in her bed, I’m seeing life from Mom’s perspective. That’s what I want to share here.
Writing my mom’s obituary isn’t about summarizing a life—it’s about choosing which love stories to make visible in the fewest possible words. By the way, this isn’t her obituary. It’s my brief reminiscence.
Being named Stephen Townsend Conley Jr.—a “Chip” off the old block—it was clear my marching orders were to become a better version of my accomplished, John Wayne–loving dad. He was my baseball coach, Boy Scout leader, the model for my path through high school and college. On the surface, my life paralleled his.
But it was Mom who imprinted her soul on me.
She was the quiet force who gave this little introvert a dollop of belief in myself, beyond my accomplishments.
She was also the one I could cry with.
When I was seven, I threw a Superball in my room and—horror of horrors—it crashed through the corner of my bedroom window. I tried to hide it, placing my G.I. Joes in front of the damage. But when one of the Joes fell through the window, I knew the jig was up and tearfully told Mom the truth. (Thank you, George Washington and that damn cherry tree.)
Mom helped me see the relief and freedom that came from telling the truth—a lesson that would matter years later when I came out to my parents as a gay man in the early days of the AIDS crisis.
Another cry came in 8th grade.
In 7th grade, I had come out in a different way—going from deeply introverted to class president and a starting spot on the basketball team. But a year later, after weeks of tryouts, I stared at the list…and my name wasn’t on it.
What if the high point of my life had already happened?
I ran to the car, buried my face in Mom’s lap, and sobbed. She reminded me of something I’ve spent a lifetime relearning:
You are lovable for who you are, not what you do.
Like many women, Mom found her voice later in life. In her 60s, she became an alchemist of her own polarities—adding a little masculine to her feminine, a little liberal to her conservatism, a little extrovert to her introvert.
She became a fierce advocate for social justice—and wasn’t shy about delivering a well-timed tongue-lashing.
Case in point: my adult foster son, Damien.
After being wrongfully imprisoned in San Quentin for eight months (a situation I helped overturn), Damien came to live with me—but he carried anger, including toward me. Mom, concerned for my safety after a couple of unsettling late-night encounters, took him to brunch and gave him a clear ultimatum: move out or face the consequences.
He moved out.
Mom had some nerve. So it feels oddly appropriate that on the day she died, I exposed one of my own—fracturing a left molar on the way to the airport, just days after losing a filling on the right.
Mothers and molars.
Earlier that week, in a Wisdom Circle at our Cancer Thriver workshop, I’d shared a dream: Mom and I were clinging to a plastic tarp, flapping wildly in the wind, both of us holding on for dear life—cheating death together.
After finishing her obituary, I opened a file and discovered she had already written it herself—along with a collection of her favorite obituaries.
Of course she had.
People laugh at my long “to-do” lists, but they’re a direct inheritance from Mom. And yet, in my thirties, when I was a workaholic CEO trying to live up to my dad’s expectations, she told me something I’ve never forgotten:
“Chip, someday you’ll have a ‘to-be’ list—and it will likely be more satisfying than your ‘to-do’ list.”
Mother knows best.