She cheered for the Twins, loved Chuck Berry and did the crossword puzzle each day.
Mary Lou Westerberg, who died July 2, was the mother of Replacements rocker Paul Westerberg and radio DJ Mary Lucia. But her obituary has gone viral because its details capture the extraordinary nature of what might appear, at first, to be an ordinary life.
Westerberg thought “The Wizard of Oz” and “It’s a Wonderful Life” were “sentimental fantasy crap,” according to the obituary, which Lucia wrote.
“Her signature fragrance was Estee Lauder’s Youth-Dew.”
“At the time of her passing she had active crushes on Rudy Gobert, [Byron] Buxton, and some dude whose name we don’t know from ‘Dancing With the Stars.’”
A lifelong Minneapolis resident, Westerberg lived to be 100 and “still had all her smarts,” her daughter Julie Westerberg said Tuesday. “She still was just a crackerjack.” She died in her south Minneapolis home after a series of strokes.
It’s been a tough week for the Westerberg family. Laurie Lindeen, singer/guitarist in the pioneering Twin Cities rock band Zuzu’s Petals and Paul Westerberg’s ex-wife, died July 1 of a brain aneurysm. She was 62.
“With the shocking passing of Laurie Lindeen. Both my brother and his son lost their mothers less than a day apart,” Mary Lucia wrote on Facebook, sharing her mother’s obituary. “Daylight is good at arriving at the right time. It’s not always gonna be this grey.”