Description

Ode to Joyce
My mother delighted in so many things—her artwork, sunsets, strangers’ kids she met in the grocery store, fishing, teaching her cat to fetch, astronauts and John Wayne, driving down South Florida’s A1A (“It makes me feel so pretty”), and just about everything my sister and I ever did.
The evening before she went to the hospital, I suggested watching the sunset from the back yard. The temperature was in the '70s and the wispy clouds overhead promised a good show.
Using a walker, my mom crept along carefully and painfully, then settled into a lawn chair stacked with pillows. We had brought the phone outside, and as we watched the sky light up, she made calls to cousins and friends—laughing, joking and telling them how she wished they could be there to share that moment.
My mom, Joyce Johnson Ocker, passed away a week later, just a week before this past Thanksgiving, but the gift she gave my sister and me—joy—will be with us forever.
--Lisa Ocker