* My mom, Barbara Miller, passed away peacefully last night, surrounded by family.

My mom’s illness has been a profound experience for my family. It truly brought out the best in us. It was a privilege to be with her as much as I could throughout this whole ordeal.

But I do want to particularly thank my daughter Vanessa and my niece Isabel for bringing such comfort to their grandma as she struggled with Stage 4 cancer for nearly a year. Her eyes lit up every time one of them visited her. And they both gave the rest of us sound advice on how to better care for her.

A couple of photos of the two of them with their grandma in days gone by…

My brother Doug also deserves a major shoutout. He took charge, and I’ll be forever grateful for that.

But all four of my brothers pitched in. It was a beautiful thing to be a part of.

* I’ve written often about my parents, to the point where some folks have told me they felt like they knew them without ever meeting them. Mom was an avid reader of this website right up until just before session ended, and her final comment here was on May 7, when she thanked people for wishing her a happy birthday the day before.

* Mom raised her five sons to be independent, both in thought and in deed. She raised us to be different, to stand out from the crowd, to show our strengths and not be afraid to speak our minds. She also made sure we knew how to cook and clean and do laundry and even some sewing so we wouldn’t burden our future partners.

That is not the background she came from. Mom grew up on a farm in Iroquois County. My German grandma was brilliant, but she was also a traditional rural homemaker who did not drive. My Scotch-Irish granddad was a quiet, loving man who rented the land he expertly worked, and so Mom was looked down upon at times by the landowners’ kids, none of whom could hold a candle to her intelligence, wit and persistence. Her parents were poor, so Mom had to pay for her own college education and she graduated second in her class in just three years while raising babies.

* We eventually got out of there when mom aced a very difficult exam given by the Department of Defense, without receiving any additional test score points for military service or whatnot. What followed was a series of firsts for women in her chosen career. She broke numerous glass ceilings by being far and away the best person for the job or the promotion. If she was average, like most of her male counterparts, she never would’ve succeeded - and she knew it.

I graduated from a DoD high school in Germany because my parents wanted their kids to experience living in Europe, and we traveled often when we were there (the Italian Riviera was my favorite excursion, and the seven of us saved money by sleeping in our VW camper van). I attended the DoD branch of the University of Maryland in Munich for a year because of her. That year in Munich completely reshaped my life.

My dad eventually joined the DoD civil service and the two of them continued moving quite often. They were a package deal so they were transferred together. They helped staff the Dayton Accords, for instance, when they were stationed at a base there.

Mom and Dad were eventually transferred back to Germany and rented a beautiful little house near Heidelberg. I went to visit them in 1999 on my way to Kosovo, and Mom helped me rent a car by asking for a favor from the German rental agency her office used for Kosovo assignments after everybody else hung up on me when I told them my destination was a war zone. Mom wasn’t pleased I was traveling to Kosovo, but she believed in me so much that she helped make it happen.

Eventually, they were transferred to the Rock Island Arsenal and they settled in that area for good.

* Mom had five boys, but always wanted a daughter. And then her sons started raising families, and, lo and behold, we gave her a ton of granddaughters. She was overjoyed by that development. But she also deeply loved her grandsons. Nobody ever felt left out when Grandma was around.

* Mom loved to laugh. Many years ago, a Quad Cities newspaper reported on some nasty criminal named Rich Miller who had been apprehended, but mistakenly included my photo in the story. The paper published my weekly column, so some photo editor apparently got a bit confused.

The newspaper assigned a columnist to write about the mishap. I don’t have that column with me where I am (actually, I’m sure it’s at my mom’s house, but I don’t want to spend hours looking for it), but I told the columnist I was initially worried that my mother, a subscriber, would see that pic and freak out. The columnist called my mom and she laughed it all off to the point where the columnist wrote that holiday dinners must be a lot of fun at the Miller household.

Yes, they were.

Mom could be a very serious person, but she delighted in laughter. And, being a dutiful son, I tried to make her laugh whenever we spoke.

I think I will miss that more than anything - more than the recipe tips we swapped every week, or the way she had of making everyone in her family feel important, or the kindness she showed. She was just a lot of fun to be around.

* I had heart surgery eleven years ago. My mom came to the hospital to visit every day. And when I was discharged, she insisted on pushing my wheelchair out the hospital door. I said something like, “Mom, they have people for this.” But Mom, by then retired, said she volunteered at her local hospital to do for others what she was doing that day for me. It was the first I’d heard of it because my mother did not like to brag on herself. She just quietly did the right thing and that was that.

Mom loved her garden and particularly loved her lilac bushes. Her mom had several lilac bushes, so they’d been a part of her life forever. I cannot smell lilacs without thinking about Mom.

* Mom’s funeral will likely be a week from tomorrow in Geneseo, Illinois. Her burial will then follow the next day in Pontiac, at the same cemetery where her parents are buried. We’ll post her obituary when it’s finalized.

There’s a Statehouse saying of, “Watch the roller coaster, don’t ride it.” Well, my family had no choice but to ride this particular roller coaster for months on end. And now we’re all exhausted.

In other words, I wouldn’t expect much of anything out of Isabel and myself until after my mom’s services. Plus, I skipped a bunch of routine medical tests last summer and used her illness as an excuse and my mother was not happy about that. So, I really need to get those done next week.

* Peace…

Let it be known, there is a fountain
That was not made by the hands of men

I miss you, Mom.