'We were the light of her life' — Stephen Colbert's tribute to his mother

When I was writing my eulogy for my Mum, I read through dozens of 'mother eulogies' on Speakola. I ended up quoting from this one. Stephen Colbert's tribute to his mother, Lorna.

I’ve long believed that being funny is an undervalued talent in writing. That comic novels are underrated. That comedians are disregarded as clowns when they share political views. That literary ‘greatness’ is somehow equated with ‘heaviness’, particularly in the twenty first century, to the extent that much of the award season fiction is basically unreadable.

On Speakola I regularly read or hear speeches from notably ‘funny’ people that are simply superb, often when they’re not trying to be funny.

Stephen Colbert is one of the most talented people to have ever walked the planet. His speech at the White House Correspondents Dinner in 2006 was one of the first dozen I ever added to the Speakola library. For those who don’t know the 2000s Colbert persona, he played a right wing Dubya acolyte on The Daily Show, which led to his own Comedy Central show, immediately following Jon Stewart’s. President Bush was actually in attendance for this. It’s one of my favourite roasts of all time:

By the way, before I get started, if anybody needs anything else at their tables, just speak slowly and clearly into your table numbers. Somebody from the NSA will be right over with a cocktail. Mark Smith, ladies and gentlemen of the press corps, Madame First Lady, Mr. President, my name is Stephen Colbert and tonight it's my privilege to celebrate this president. We're not so different, he and I. We get it. We're not brainiacs on the nerd patrol. We're not members of the factinista. We go straight from the gut, right sir? That's where the truth lies, right down here in the gut. Do you know you have more nerve endings in your gut than you have in your head? You can look it up. I know some of you are going to say "I did look it up, and that's not true." That's 'cause you looked it up in a book.

Next time, look it up in your gut. I did. My gut tells me that's how our nervous system works. Every night on my show, the Colbert Report, I speak straight from the gut, OK? I give people the truth, unfiltered by rational argument. I call it the "No Fact Zone." Fox News, I hold a copyright on that term.

‘Do you know you have more nerve endings in your gut than you have in your head?’ What a freakin’ genius. He’s also an incredible dancer, and did some ballet training as part of his arts education. It’s now 12 years since his Daft Punk tribute, and it’s possible you either don’t remember it, or have never seen it:

Which leads me, circuitously, to the ‘serious bit’ that I lifted to place in my Mum’s eulogy. Today it’s twelve years since Colbert delivered a beautiful tribute to his mother, Lorna, on The Colbert Report. It’s so perfectly weighted, touching on a parent’s ability to influence a child and nurture a talent, and radiates the love Colbert had for an extraordinary woman. Lorna Colbert had eleven children, lost three of them, as well as her husband and brother. This is the bit I quoted for Mum’s eulogy:

And 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 does not diminish, it only magnifies the enormity of the room whose doors have quietly shut.

That’s so perfectly expressed, especially the cavernous sadness of the word ‘quietly’,

If you haven’t seen that tribute, it’s worth a watch.

The transcript is below:

For Lorna Colbert: 'We were the light of her life, and she let us know it ‘til the end', by son Steven Colbert

19 June 2013, New York, USA

Hi everybody. Thanks for being here tonight, everyone in here and out there watching. I’ve been away from the Report for a week because one week ago from today, my mother Lorna Tuck Colbert died. And I want to thank everybody who offered their thoughts and prayers.

Now if you watch this show, and you like this show, it’s because everybody who works here and I’m lucky to be one of them. But when you watch the show, if you also like me, that’s because of my mom. So before we start the show again, I’d like to tell you a little bit about her.