My mom, Alicia Crawford, was so loved and she's already incredibly missed. I'm doing this LFEBridge to help my dad pay for all the funeral costs. I'm setting the goal a little low but hope we can exceed that. I didn't have any extra money to contribute to help him pay for the costs of everything (and, Jesus, are funerals expensive), so I'm doing this in hopes I can help. The funeral and viewing have already happened but a lot of it was put on a credit card and her tombstone has yet to be purchased, so hopefully I can raise some money to help my dad out with those things. Any and all donations are very much appreciated. Edit: And I wanted to add in here the eulogy my dad asked me to write for her that I read at her funeral... I spent the last few months, alongside my father, caretaking for my mom. It was all consuming, it was exhausting, it was incredibly stressful, and sometimes we drove each other nuts but I wouldn’t trade it for the world. We talked almost every night while I was helping her get into bed, where she’d tell me I was the only one who “did it right.”. Even if my dad had put her to bed by himself that night, I’d often go in to kiss her goodnight and we’d chat about politics, TV shows, who was stupid, what movies we wanted to see—anyone who knew my mom knows she could talk, so basically anything could become the conversation topic. She became my best friend and I’m going to miss her a whole lot. Alicia Crawford aka Titi Leasy was a devoted and beloved mother, grandmother, wife, aunt, friend, and all around wonderful person. She loved pugs, babies, flashy jewelry, romance novels, inappropriate jokes, 90 Day Fiance, Grey’s Anatomy, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. She rarely hated anything—unless it was one of the James Bond movies my dad was putting on for the 500th time. My mom loved in a way that made everyone feel loved—she loved love. If she loved you, you could do no wrong—you could never look bad or make a wrong decision ever. She never ran out of compliments to give the folks around her. She loved in a way I try to love—unapologetically and unconditionally. And that love was felt—because she was so, so loved in return. I’ve received flowers and nice messages from folks who only met her once saying how much they loved her. I got a nice message from an ex who hates me, saying how often he’s thought of her kindness, caring, and humor throughout the years. I even got a message from a listener of my podcast from Spain who I’d never spoke with before, telling me (and this is an exact quote) “for those of us who didn’t have a loving mother it was truly beautiful to hear that you were so lucky.” My mom would often say that in another life she must have had a lot of children and that my friends were those kids coming back to her—and she meant it. She was a 2nd mom to so many of my friends. I’ve had many friends over the last few days thank me for letting them into my family and telling me how much my mom meant to them. I had a friend text me to tell me that my mom helped her feel good about herself at a time, late teens early 20s, when feeling good about yourself was hard. I had my favorite writing professor from Rutgers email me to tell me that when she met my mom, she was still so new to the job but my mom told her she was doing a great job and she just believed her because my mom was “so definitive.” A friend from grade school even told me how she always thought my mom was the nicest. My mom would sometimes confuse me and my dad’s names with our beloved dead pug Adam’s, but she could remember which of my friends had kids and all their names and who they married and also that one piece of jewelry they wore that one time that she loved. It was those small details that helped make the folks around her feel so loved—even those that weren’t biological family members. Alicia Crawford, without realizing it, taught me the importance of both family and Chosen Family. She helped me realize how important everyone is—from family member to spouse to casual friend to best friend. My mom also had so many good sayings that me and my friends would repeat. Almost all of them not fit to repeat here in church. But she loved to call me, my brother, our pug, my exes, her husband, and her grandson “handsome hunks.” She would also not suffer a fool—she never felt awkward, so she could tell someone about themselves without even blinking. I once wrote an essay in grad school all about how my mom was not a person to be messed with and it was met with folks in workshop telling me they found my mom to be an unbelievable character—which, to be fair, is a very accurate assessment of Alicia Crawford. I know she wouldn’t want me or any of us sitting around and crying. She’d often joke that she’d want all her favorite scenes from Buffy played at her funeral. And while I don’t have a supercut of Sarah Michelle Gellar fighting demons, I’ll leave you all with this quote from her favorite poem, Cleopatra Dying by Thomas Stephens Collier, that she’d quote often and at any minor inconvenience: Guard me, help me, give me courage Like a Queen to meet my fate. “I am dying, Egypt, dying,” Let the Caesar's army come—
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