Tribute to
TIDEGYPSY.

I haven’t known how to write this. I still don’t really know how and render myself breathless each time I try.

On July 29th 2026, my mom, Karen Marie Lawrence, went home with Jesus.

It has taken me more than two months to say that publicly. Not because I didn’t want to honor her, and certainly not because there wasn’t enough to say. It was the opposite.

There was too much and it was a "club" that I wasn't ready to be part of.

How do you make a post about the person who has been there for your entire life?

How do you take something as enormous as losing your mother and put it into words on a screen?

For a while, I just couldn’t.

And as it turns out, I maybe wasn't as put-together about her passing than I originally thought.

I think I was in shock for longer than I realized. Her illness had already changed so much, and after she died there was still her home, her estate, things that needed to be handled and protected, decisions that couldn’t wait, and a life that somehow kept expecting me to participate in it.

Underneath all of that was this one impossible truth that I still catch myself trying to understand:

My mom is gone.

And I’m learning that you don’t realize it only once.

You realize it over and over again.

When something wonderful happens and your first thought is, “I have to tell Mama.”

You realize it when something falls apart and you want the person who has always helped you figure out what to do next. Call Mama.

You realize it on an ordinary Tuesday when nothing terrible has happened at all and you just want to hear her voice. Call Mama.

For me, I feel it especially when I’m driving.

I have always loved driving.

For years, there was hardly a drive when my mom wasn’t somewhere on the other end of my phone. We talked about important things, ridiculous things and nothing at all. Sometimes we probably spent half the conversation just laughing and repeating ourselves.

Now the car feels different.

I turn the radio up louder than it needs to be. Sometimes I just want to get wherever I’m going because the quiet gives me too much room to remember that I can’t call her.

I never knew an empty passenger seat could feel so full of someone.

Losing her has also made me realize how much she quietly carried.

There were things she remembered, relationships she tended, questions I could hand to her, pieces of family history she simply knew. Things I never thought about because Mama was there.

Now sometimes I feel the weight of being one of the people left to remember it all and hold some of it together.

Those are shoes I will never fill.

And maybe I’m not supposed to.

Maybe loving your mother after she is gone isn’t about becoming her. Maybe it is about carrying forward whatever she managed to leave inside you.

For most of my life, my mom was steady as the sun.

If you knew Karen, you knew how kind she could be. You knew that smile. You knew the hug and the usual kiss on your face that came with it. You knew she loved people deeply.

She was simple and somehow also just a tiny bit of a diva, which anybody who really knew her will understand.

She had opinions. She could absolutely tell you what she thought. She was not some perfect, polished version of a person, but she was perfectly imperfect the way she was.

She was Karen.

She was Mama.

She was Nana.

A wildflower.

She was deeply loved. She is still all of these things and is still so very loved.

She was also one of my greatest fans. She called me her ‘wonderful daughter and her beautiful daughter, Andrea’. She noticed the things I accomplished and reminded me of my strengths when I had forgotten them myself.

There is something very strange about losing someone who has been standing in your corner for as long as you can remember.

Part of the reason I finally knew I needed to write this is because she wasn’t only mine to miss.

Her grandchildren lost Nana.

Her siblings lost their sister.

People lost an aunt and a friend.

There are people who loved her who deserve to know that she is missed profoundly and that her life mattered here.

Life is different without her.

It will always be different.

My mom would not have wanted us making some grand production out of her. She wasn’t interested in being discussed at length in a room full of people. That would probably have made her want to leave her own memorial.

She would much rather we remember her.

So there is no rush.

Because of everything surrounding her illness and everything that needed attention afterward, we decided that when our family is together again, whenever that turns out to be, we will have a celebration for her. I will be certain to keep everyone posted as we plan, though it may be awhile.

A party feels more like Mama anyway.

There should be food. There should be stories. There should be music. There should eventually be laughter. “And by God, there will be dancing!”

Be patient with yourselves, with your loved ones.

There is no hurry.

We have the rest of our lives to remember her. To process. To grieve properly.

In time, parts of Mama will also return to places that already belong to her story.

Part of her will go to Gonzaga Bay in Mexico, where she had many wonderful memories with my uncle and my Aunt Mary Ann.

Part of her will go to Piedras Blancas in San Simeon.

When our family managed the Sands Motel and I was in high school, she would go there when she needed to think. That whole stretch of coast is woven into our lives. The pier, the lighthouse, the seals, the beach, the sound of the waves.

Years later, Greg and I would be married on that same Hearst Beach.

Another part of Mama will stay in Wofford Heights, at the exact place that can be seen from the porch of her home on Panorama Drive.

I love that more than I can explain.

Part of her will stay with her family where she's always belonged.

I love knowing that she will be in places where she was happy. Places where she thought and laughed and lived. Places where we can stand someday and say, “Mama loved it here.”

There are certain things I don’t think I will ever experience quite the same way again.

• Fireworks shows.
• The smell of Eucalyptus.
• Lavender plants.
• Soft green and pale purple.
• Linen.
• Twine.
• The ocean.
• Lighthouses.
• The pier at San Simeon.
• Walking a beach at low tide.
• Finding a heart-shaped rock.
• A special, yummy, sweet treat.
• Or sipping a margarita, mamacita.

There are pieces of those final days that I will probably always keep between Mama, Aunt Mare, God, and me.

What I can say is that we had the privilege of caring for my mother through something incredibly difficult, and when her life here ended, we were able to care for her one final time with tenderness, dignity, prayer and love.

We were honored to cheer her home to Heaven with cries of “Towanda!” knowing that, in true Fried Green Tomatoes fashion, she deserved nothing less than one unforgettable grand entrance through those Pearly Gates.

A core memory in a way, I never wanted, but will cherish.

I can very humbly say with absolute certainty that this 52 year old woman was not the same little girl saying goodbye to her mom, in that room, that day.

My mama loved music.

And during her illness she would talk a lot about wanting to dance again.

I have thought about those words so many times since she died.

She wanted to dance again.

So if you loved my mom, play the music.

• Sing too loud.
• Wear the expensive perfume.
• Use the good china.
• Get dressed up for no reason at all.
• Dance when you get the chance.
• Laugh when something is funny, even if you were crying five minutes before.
• Go outside and let the sun hit your face.
• Walk near the water.
• Be the wildflower.
• Be some light when things feel dark.

Don’t wait for a ‘special occasion’. To be alive is reason enough to find joy!

I don’t think Mama would want anyone who loved her to spend the rest of their life finding her only in sadness.

There will be sadness. There has to be. Because, what a love! She was too loved for there not to be.

But she will show up in all the versions of laughter too.

Someone will tell one of her stories.

A song will come on.

Someone will say something silly that she would have said.

One of us will find ourselves standing somewhere beautiful and suddenly think of Karen.

And for a second, she won’t feel quite so far away.

Look for her!

But above everything else, this is what gives me peace:

My mom found Jesus.

I know that.

And because I know that, I know where she is.

So if you loved her too and truly want to know where to find her, look to Him.

Heaven is no longer only this place I believe in somewhere beyond this life.

She is there.

And somehow that makes Heaven that much sweeter.

It even makes death feel a little less frightening, because someone I love so much has already crossed that distance.

There will be more stories about her.

There will be photographs I haven’t been able to look at yet and memories that will probably catch me completely off guard.

Breakup songs strangely resemble grief and loss songs, such as “Everywhere” by Tim McGraw.

She truly is EVERYWHERE.

There will be days when I am okay and days when I am suddenly not okay at all.

There will probably be thousands of times for the rest of my life when something happens and I still think, for just a second, “I need to call Mama.”

I think that may be one of the hardest things about losing her.

Life keeps happening.

And one of the people I most want to tell about it isn’t on the other end of the phone anymore.

So after more than two months, I needed to finally say this.

Karen Marie Lawrence was here.

To me, she was Mama.

To her grandchildren, she was Nana.

And to so many others she was a sister, an aunt, a cousin, a friend, TIDEGYPSY, and one of those people you somehow never imagined your life without.

I miss her.

I miss her beautiful face.

I miss her when something good happens.

I miss her when something hurts.

I miss her voice.

I miss her hugs.

I miss knowing she was there.

I miss my Mama.

She will never be forgotten and I am blessed to have her continue to live in the nooks and crannies of our everyday lives.

Best of all, I know her new address.

And Mama, you wanted to dance again.

So dance.

We promise to dance with you every chance we get.

Hug Daddy, Nana, Papa, and my brothers for me.

TOWANDA!!!

I'll love you forever and yours will be the first face I look for when I get there. Thank you for being my mom.

Love,Your “wonderful beautiful daughter, Andrea”