I heard it said once that you’re not really an adult until both your parents are gone.

After 52 years, I’m finally an adult. My mom died a week ago Wednesday. She’d had a series of small strokes over the last few years, so it was a matter of time until she had a big one. A couple of weeks ago, she was coming out of hip-replacement surgery when she apparently had a massive stroke on the left side of her brain. The doctor said it would have felled a man half her age.

She remained intermittently conscious for a week or so; I managed to get back to Minneapolis to see her a couple of weekends ago, while she was in and out – mostly out – so I was lucky enough to get a chance to say goodbye. Still, we knew it was only a matter of time. She had an advance directive calling for no heroic measures in such a situation. She had an absolute horror of nursing homes, particularly since her brother had a similar experience 30 years ago and spent the last four years of his life comatose in one. We did the right thing, for a lot of reasons.

Chief among those is she was more than ready to go. She’s been ready to go for 15 years ever since my Dad, the only man she ever loved, died. But in the last six months or a year, she’d been in constant, severe pain from her hip and she often expressed a desire for it to finally be over. (Which, by the way, is a real conversation stopper; when your mother tells you, “I’m ready to go,” there isn’t much you can say in return. “So, Mom, how ‘bout them Vikings?”)

So, eventually we moved her into a very nice hospice. My sister and niece were with her when she died, peacefully.

It was a lovely funeral and I saw some very close friends from my youth I hadn’t seen in years. I even saw a friend I worked with 25 years ago and that was a real unexpected treat.

I carried the urn with her ashes in, which turned out to be kind of a weird experience. It occurred to me that just as she was the first member of my family to hold me, I was the last member of her family to hold her. It was an oddly touching thought.

And of course, there were the occasional moments of private comedy one sometimes sees at funerals. My girlfriend, Karon, had never been to a Catholic Mass. When they did the handshake of peace, she turned to me helplessly and said, “What do I do?” “Kiss me,” I said, not a sentence often spoken in Immaculate Conception Church. (She did.)

But if I want to tell you about my Mom, I can just tell you what I said in the eulogy.

She was Mom.

To me, she was a real milk-and-cookies Mom, and I mean that literally. I remember coming home from school and actually having milk and cookies waiting for me. That’s a small thing, but I think somehow it says a lot about her.

In fact, it wasn’t until I got older, and met other people and heard their stories about their own mothers, that I realized what a good mother she was. I know people who, to this day, have a hard time because every time they do anything they hear in the back of their mind the voice of the overly critical woman who raised them, warning them they’ll screw up or they’re doing the wrong thing or they’re just not good enough.

If I ever heard my Mom’s voice when I was making a decision, it was just a warning to be careful, but it also said she loved me and she hoped things worked out well.

I also realized as I got older how difficult her life was in some ways. My Dad was gone a lot on business. For much of our childhoods, Mom had to be both Mom and Dad much of the time. Yet I never heard her complain. In fact, if we ever complained about Dad being gone, she was quick to remind us that he was working to put food on the table and a roof over our heads – and if we were going to take advantage of that, we shouldn’t complain about his job.

My Mom taught me how to be kind and how to be decent. But she also taught me how to be a loving person.

Of course, you can’t talk about my Mom without talking about my Dad. Theirs was a love that lasted. They truly were one heart and soul. Another thing I learned as I grew older was how rare that is and how lucky you are if you find it. But we kids had a great example of what love could be. That’s another of the great gifts we got from our parents.

Since she was ready to go, we have to temper our sadness with the thought that death was not unwelcome for her. And most importantly, she’s with Dad now and that’s what she wanted more than anything. And if we miss her, we at least have plenty of memories of the lovely, loving woman to take the edge off the sadness.

And maybe that’s her last, and most lasting, gift to us.