Stephen Colbert dropped his usual funnyman role Wednesday on "The Colbert Report" to give his mother,
Lorna Colbert, who died last week at age 92, a loving, heart-rending tribute.
Starting with her childhood and how his parents met, Colbert moved people to tears as he talked about his mother, and many on social media passed along the short video clip of his words.
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Colbert’s trademark humor showed in talking about how his parents met, and that his mother drove her friends crazy because she’d ride by her future husband’s house and refuse to even look to see if he was in the yard.
“And evidently she also drove my father crazy because they were married and promptly had 11 children,” he said.
“She made a very loving home for us,” he said. “No fight between siblings could end without hugs and kisses, though hugs never needed a reason in her house. Singing and dancing were encouraged, except at the dinner table. She had trained as an actress when she was younger and she would teach us how to do stage falls by pretending to faint on the kitchen floor.”
Colbert said his mother had a challenging life, losing a brother, her husband and three sons.
“But her love for her family and her faith in God somehow gave her the strength not only to go on but to love life without bitterness and to instill in us a gratitude for every day we have together,” he said.
“I know it may sound greedy to want more days with a person who lived so long ... but the fact that my mother was 92 ... only magnifies the enormity of the room whose door has now quietly shut,” he said during Wednesday’s tribute.
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