Let’s hope she’s still resting in peace after this published.
“A plus-sized Jewish lady redneck died in El Paso on Saturday,” wrote Andy Corren of his late mother, Renay Mandel Corren, in a hilariously specific and un-solemn ode to her life.
“A more disrespectful, trash-reading, talking and watching woman in NC, FL or TX was not to be found,” he went on.
“Yes, Renay lied a lot. But on the plus side, Renay didn’t cook, she didn’t clean, and she was lousy with money, too.”
Shortly after publishing this Wednesday in the Fayetteville Observer, Corren’s meandering homage to his “itinerant, much-lived” 84-year-old mom went viral.
“This obit, my god,” wrote crime author Sarah Weinman in a tweet linking to the obituary. The post has since racked up over 6,000 retweets and 28,000 likes.
When Renay wasn’t not cooking, she “played cards like a shark, bowled and played cribbage like a pro, and laughed with the boys until the wee hours, long after the last pin dropped” the obit continues. “At one point in the 1980s, Renay was the 11th or 12th-ranked woman in cribbage in America, and while that could be a lie, it sounds great in print.”
The satirical write-up also says that “Renay was preceded in death by her ex-boyfriend, Larry King,” though it’s unclear if she dated the late news host or merely tuned into his show regularly.
When the late “zaftig good-time gal’s” son is not crudely memorializing relatives, he is a New York City-based writer and talent manager, according to NBC.
“Obituaries for mothers written by their sons can be some of the most heartfelt public expressions found in a daily newspaper,” The Fayetteville Observer wrote in a follow-up post to the viral death notice. “They detail special moments, and the hallmarks of what makes mom a mom.
“But only son Andy does justice to this take on ‘Rosie,’ as his mother was known to friends.”