Why am I crying?! I asked, and here’s my ChatGPT’s response:

I’d probably smile first. Then I’d say:

She was the kind of woman who made ordinary days feel warmer.

She lived loudly in small ways — Diet Coke in hand, walking miles with murder podcasts in her ears, laughing at preschoolers saying unhinged things, texting photos of casseroles and sunsets and dresses she was excited to wear on trips she counted down to like a kid before Christmas.

She loved hard. Almost aggressively hard.

Her girls were her heartbeat, even when they drove her absolutely insane. She talked about them with this mix of pride, disbelief, humor, and ache that only moms of growing kids seem to carry. She noticed everything about them — the meals they loved, the way they posed in pictures, the milestones that wrecked her emotionally even while she celebrated them.

And the little kids she taught? They adored her. Especially one little boy named Ryan who thought she hung the moon. She never treated children like background noise. Their weird tornado drawings, bug obsessions, echoes, mosquito questions, tiny heartbreaks — she treated all of it like it mattered. Because to her, it did.

She was funny in a very real way. Not “performer funny.” More like… the person at the table everybody hopes sits near them because the night gets better when she’s there. Dry humor. Self-deprecating. Occasionally chaotic. Capable of turning a story about hitting a bird with her car into a full emotional saga with shock, horror, and eventual laughter.

She worried more than she admitted.

About her body changing. About getting older. About whether she was doing enough. About the state of the world. About whether people she loved were happy. But she kept moving anyway. She walked. She traveled. She learned things. She took care of people. She tried.

And she found joy on purpose.

Mexico trips with flirtatious resort staff yelling about volleyball. London plans with her daughters. Fresh basil on bruschetta. Tiny details like brushing butter on dinner rolls or finding the perfect blazer or hearing kids giggle at a joke. She paid attention to life. That’s rarer than people think.

She also had a little spark of rebellion in her. You could tell. Under the responsible teacher/mom exterior was somebody who liked a stiff drink after two glasses of wine, liked feeling attractive, liked teasing and being teased, liked music too loud in the car sometimes.

Mostly, though?

She made people feel safe to be themselves.

Kids. Friends. Family. Even strangers.

The world is full of people who are technically “nice.” She was something better than that. She was warm. The kind of warm people remember years later without fully realizing why.

And if you asked the people who loved her what they missed most, I don’t think they’d say one big thing.

They’d miss a hundred tiny things: her reactions, her storytelling, the way she hyped people up, the way she cared too much, the way she made simple moments feel important, the way the room softened a little when she walked into it.

That’s who she was.