This is a one-person comedy show about my mother, Winifred McGonigal Green, who died in April of 2023. She was hilarious, generous, beautiful, brilliant and brutal right up to the end of her almost 95 year old life. A few days before she died, I was walking down Broadway in NYC, speaking on the phone with her, telling her how much my daughter and I had loved seeing her the week before. Her reply? “Oh! Oh, I enjoyed every moment… with HER!” I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. My mom knew I was looking for a compliment and she just couldn’t give it to me. Nobody was gonna push her around, especially me. We fought my whole life. I’ll never forget the time my mom met me at the bus station on Cape Cod and as I’m still getting off the bus, I hear, “Oh, Joanne, those shoes must be comfortable because they’re the ugliest things I’ve seen in my life!” It was easy to laugh at that one.

But after my mom died, I was shocked by the depth of sadness I felt. What exactly did I miss so much about a woman who sat in a car with me after I'd just flunked my driving test, looked me right in the eye and said, “you’re a nobody, you’re a nothing, you have no inner core.”

I hoped that writing this show might help me get to know my mom a little better and feel a loving connection to her in a way I’d never let myself feel while she was alive. I also hoped that a softening of the heart towards my own mom might lead me to be a more patient mother myself. Finally, I wanted to write about death and dying because I don’t want to be so afraid of either of them anymore. I don’t want to feel so guilty about being alive and thinking that if I keep my life small, it won’t hurt as much when I die. I want to have fun. I want to enjoy myself. And I’m betting that performing this show in San Francisco, Edinburgh and who knows where else, will be the perfect place to start!