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Mom.
My mother died this morning. She’d been in a coma since Tuesday, when she apparently suffered a stroke and a heart attack. Here’s the obituary that will appear in tomorrow’s Richmond paper: Ann Lucas...
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Ann Lucas Hughes, 1923-2013
Here’s what everybody who knew my mom knows about my mom. Everyone knows she was funny. Not just nice-sense-of-humor funny, but laugh out loud, on purpose funny. Lucille Ball funny. Lucille Ball had...
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My mother’s death
For the past 15 years we’ve assumed that I would die before my mother. Nobody hated that idea more than mom. As Ginny and I have said many times since the death of our son Preston twelve years ago,...
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Handwriting.
I have an incredibly bad handwriting. It’s something everyone can agree on. Nobody ever says, no, no, Mike, you’re being too hard on yourself; you have an OK handwriting. Nobody’s ever said that....
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Prayers, sacred and otherwise.
Hal Tench just sent me the best email I’ve received this year. This is it in its entirety: Are you dead yet? Not everyone can get to the heart of a question the way Hal can. (It was tempting to let...
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An update.
It’s Thanksgiving weekend and I’m once again repeating myself: No one has more to be thankful for than I do. I have a fabulous family, a wonderful job and a life that’s filled with life....
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Modern love and me.
As if it were needed, here is more evidence that I possess a strong inner female. I am addicted to the Modern Love column that runs every week in The New York Times. It’s a first person true story...
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The heart of an industry.
Patti and I had lunch with Jeff Goodby two weeks ago. I’ve been amazed and touched by the reaction of the advertising community to my upcoming demise. I feel like an old mafia don to whom respects are...
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Ella Kelley
Ella Kelley died this week. It breaks a piece off of my heart. She was supposed to outlive me. She was younger than me and her disease came after mine. I teased her about having a “wimpy” ailment,...
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The obit desk.
When I was a young reporter for the Richmond News Leader, I often worked the obituary desk. That was different than reporting on the death of, say, a celebrity or a government official. Reporters...
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Ring dem bells.
Ginny’s getting nothing but good reports from her docs. She’s right on schedule for her chemo test program and her tumors continue to shrink. (As expected, if everything stays on schedule, she’ll...
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An autobiographical obituary by the late Mike Hughes
After many unexplained delays, I have finally lived up to my prognosis and have at last departed this life. It’s been a life I’ve loved. In the months leading up to this moment, I was astonished at the...
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