It’s hard to believe that after all these years and all this gray hair, I’m an orphan now.

My mom, Colleen Fern Perry, came to the end of a remarkable 90-year run last week and died peacefully.

Keenie, as she was known to my dad, friends and family — and “Queenie” by her father —  had a great sense of humor, and no qualms about asking for what she wanted.

What she wanted a lot of the time were Skinny Vanilla Lattes, white cake with white frosting and Reese’s Peanut Butter cups. She would add in a few plain M&Ms and an occasional red seedless grape as nutritional supplements.

A Rocky Ford original, she knew the thrill of a snipe hunt with friends alongside the town cemetery. She made lifelong friends in high school, and outlived them all.

I knew Keenie best either peering over pulp-fiction or a historical romance novel, or being visibly depressed. I learned at an early age that making her laugh rewarded us both, even if just for a few seconds. So I learned to perform for her early on, and even on her last day here.

In a fog of pain and sedation at the hospital, I got her to come to while lying in her bed and offered her a Skinny Vanilla Latte.

“David?” she said, bewildered. “I’m dreaming that you’re here bringing me a latte.”

I told her that I have long been the son that every parent dreams of having. 

She laughed and told me I was full of crap, drank heavily from the Starbucks cup and went back to sleep.

Like so many children of the Great Depression, hers was a long and often uneasy life that held lessons for all of us.

She struggled for years with crippling depression, spending more than two years during the late 1960s in a Denver mental hospital.

While much of it was stressful for my younger brother and me, it was also an incredible opportunity to lead lives we’d never dreamed of having if she was just another mom at home doing laundry and complaining about the mess in my room.

I won additional parents in the neighborhood since mine was missing. Lupe Gonzales taught me the importance of loyalty to friends, stern grace and how to make the best flour tortillas on the planet. Grampa Lundstrom taught me which weeds in the lawn were not only edible, but really, really good, alongside kroppkakor, which are giant Swedish potato balls with ground meat inside. Mrs. Beasley taught me how to be nice to annoying people and make graham cracker pie, which is to die for.

My brother and I spent time being raised by older cousins who nearly killed all of us going too fast on a gravel road while we rode in the bed of a pickup. I learned to watch my pain-in-the-butt little brother like a hawk or else he would slip away at the drive-in and call our dad to come get him late at night.

It was a miraculous childhood that inspired me to cook, do laundry and sneak out to camp in Farmer Jones’ bull pasture even as no one knew, all in the third and fourth grades.

While the mental hospital was frequently a real downer for my mom and our family, it was an amazing collection of some of the funniest and smartest people I ever met, some of whom became lifelong friends of my mom and our family.

Erica Propst taught me what a delicacy toasted bagels with real cream cheese, not the pretend whipped kind, are under fresh sliced heirloom tomatoes and real kosher salt.

I had one today.

When Keenie finally got out of the hospital, she continued to struggle with depression but was buoyed by new generations of psych drugs that really did help, and continue to help millions of people every day.

And as we both aged, we both learned to laugh even more, at ourselves and each other.

Like the time she barreled through deep road dips on the way to school in our ghastly long Chevrolet Suburban, pulling us out of the seats and her feet off the pedals just to plow through the second dip even faster and harder. What should have been a life-threatening moment of panic became a laugh fest so furious, we had to pull over.

She once laughed so hard at me in a Red Owl grocery store she nearly wet herself watching me mistake another mom in another print dress.

I brusquely approached the woman I mistook as my mom, who was pawing through what were clearly overripe black grapes. I grabbed the bottom of her dress and yanked hard and said, “Not those. Get the green ones,” as the strange woman, clearly not amused, looked down at me with a serious “beat it kid” look on her face.

We pretty much laughed through the ages as Keenie, and I, just got old.

Even after dying a mere 20 minutes after we got her to a hospice on that fateful Sunday, she just keeps on teaching me interesting things I wish I could tell her.

I learned right away that you can get caskets way cheaper online than in a mortuary, and they, by law, have to let you get one.

Hope you like all that pink, Keenie. 

Also, pet caskets are really cheap, but they won’t let you bury your mom in one.

Bummer.

I also learned that, despite what’s printed on the box, table salt stored in her hoarder’s closet really does have a shelf life, and 20 years is beyond it.

The saddest part of losing an aging parent is not being able to get answers to the questions I should have been asking all along. Questions like, “Why the hell do you need 42 boxes of drinking straws?” and “If all of those hundreds of pens quit writing, why didn’t you throw them away?”

Take my word for it. Even at 90, the end comes fast, I learned. Ask those questions. Drop off those Skinny Vanilla Lattes. Make that call to ask “what’s up” just for the sake of the call. And help your aging relatives purge through a lifetime of socks and silverware or else, this, too, will all be yours.

See ya, Keenie.

 Follow @EditorDavePerry on BlueSky, Threads, Mastodon, Twitter and Facebook or reach him at 303-750-7555 or [email protected]

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