Barb Drummond’s memoir is a wildly honest, heartbreakingly funny, and beautiful tribute to her late mother, Sybil Hicks. Sybil became a viral sensation thanks to an obituary that managed to make people laugh and cry in the same breath. The book traces the week following Sybil’s passing, from the family’s chaotic flights to funeral arrangements, peppered with hilarious letters from Sybil, childhood stories, family reunions, and a deeply moving eulogy in the works. It’s about memory, grief, and humor as survival, all centered around a daughter’s love for the mother she was slowly losing to Alzheimer’s long before she passed.

Reading this book felt like getting dropped into a boisterous family gathering where laughter sits shoulder-to-shoulder with grief. The writing is candid and snarky and sometimes downright chaotic, but that’s what makes it so relatable. I found myself laughing at the airport “wet sock” story and the naked hotel room mix-up, then getting blindsided by moments of raw grief, like the upside-down book or the sound of Sybil’s piano in a quiet care home. Barb’s voice is refreshingly real. She doesn’t try to pretty up death or sanitize her feelings. She writes like someone who’s had the rug pulled out but still knows where to find the jokes in the tumble.

The most touching part of the book for me was the way it paints Sybil. Not as a saint, not just a victim of Alzheimer’s, but as this whip-smart, sharp-tongued, wildly talented woman who threw pies in people’s faces and taught sewing classes in her basement. You can feel Barb’s love, guilt, and admiration all tangled together, which makes the letters and memories hit even harder. The book also shows how laughter, even the ugly snort-laugh kind, is a kind of armor. It doesn’t try to be wise or poetic. It just tells the truth. And that’s what makes it matter.

If you’ve ever lost someone slowly to something like Alzheimer’s, this book will break your heart and then wrap it in a quilt of memories, stitched together with sarcasm, warmth, and just enough swearing to keep it real. I’d recommend it to anyone who’s grieving, especially adult children trying to make sense of a complicated, funny, maddening, unforgettable parent.

Pages: 159 | ASIN : B0DJFRLSQ3