EPISODE NUMBER: 9116 (June 19, 2013)
GUESTS: The Postal Service
SEGMENTS: Remembering Lorna Colbert | Cap ‘n Crunch Scandal | Tip/Wag - Wall Street & North Carolina | The Postal Service - “Such Great Heights” | Sign Off - Stage Fall
EXCLUSIVE: The Postal Service - “A Tattered Line of String”
SUIT REPORT: Navy Suit | White Shirt | Light blue tie with navy stripes
VIDEOS: Wednesday, June 19, 2013
I’ve been away from the Report for a week because a week ago 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, that’s because of everyone who works here, and I am lucky to be one of them. But when you watch this show, if you also like me, that’s because of my mom. So to start the show again I would like to tell you a little bit about her.
She was born just a little ways from here in Larchmont, New York on Chatsworth Avenue in 1920, the same week women first got the right to vote. She spent her summers in the Adirondacks with her older sister Colleen and her younger brother Ed, who called her “Snodgrass.”
She met my father James at age 12 at cotillion and she liked him, but she didn’t want him to know how much, so she would make her friends ride their bikes all the way across town, just to pass by his house, but then she would never look to see if he was in the front yard, which of course, drove her friends crazy, and evidently, she also drove my father crazy, because they were married and promptly had eleven children.
She made a very loving home for us. No fights between siblings could end without hugs and kisses, though hugs never needed a reason in her house. Singing and dancing were encouraged, except at the dinner table. She had trained to be an actress when she was younger, so she would teach us how to do stage falls by pretending to faint on the kitchen floor. She was fun.
She knew more than her share of tragedy, losing her brother, and her husband, and three of her sons. But her love of her family and her faith in God somehow gave her the strength to not only go on, but to love life without bitterness, and to instill in all of us a gratitude for every day we have together. 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 but only magnifies the enormity of the room whose door has quietly shut.
In her last days, my mother occasionally became confused. To try and ground her, we tried to ask simple questions, like “What’s your favorite color?” “What’s your favorite song?” And she couldn’t answer these. But when asked what her favorite prayer was, she immediately recited a child’s prayer she learned in German that she used to say to my eldest brothers and sisters at bedtime when they were living in Munich in the late 1940s. Her favorite memory of prayer was that of a young mother tucking in her children.
We were the light of her life and she let us know it until the end. And that’s it. Thank you for listening. Now we can get to the truly important work of television broadcasting, which is what she would want me to do. When I was leaving her last week, I leaned over and I said, “Mom, I am going back to New York to do the show.” And she said, “I can’t wait to see it, I wouldn’t miss it for the world.” So, with that in mind. (Exhales) (gets in character) this is The Colbert Report!
What a beautiful tribute from Stephen to his Mom. I don’t think a mother could ask for a more heartwarming testimony from one of her children, and I am sure he articulated to the world what his entire family would wish to say about her. At the end, you could literally see Stephen push himself away from what was a profoundly sad week of grief and back into the character and to the show. That in itself is very courageous, and a great example of his mom’s influence working through him. Although we are sad for him, it is comforting to see him back in the studio. And it will take time before things get to feel normal again, but it will happen eventually.
Kind of glad to see The Postal Service come on in and do a nice musical performance for us, whilst regaling us with tales of recording music in the old-fangled early 2000s. Also liked when the Toys ‘r Us commercial came up and Jenny Lewis looked as though she wished the floor to swallow her up.
Share your thoughts of this very special episode in the comments.
“The [first real estate bubble] Wall Street investors pumped money into the real estate market, causing a massive bubble that led to an economic crisis. THIS time, Wall Street investors are pumping money in the real estate maker causing a massive bubble that will lead to PROSPERITY.”
“Such Great Heights”