Michelle Obama became emotional as she reflected on what a comment by her dying mother taught her about living her own life.
Obama’s mother, Marian Robinson, died at age 86 in May 2024, leaving the family without a woman Obama called her “rock.”
The former first lady spoke with NPR’s Rachel Martin on her “Wild Card” podcast about how a declaration by Robinson toward the end of her life had a profound impact on Obama.
Obama said she was taking care of an ailing Robinson at the Obamas’ home in Hawaii in the last year of Robinson’s life when her mother’s short reflection caused her to pause.
“She was realizing that she will not ever be the same old self that she was. She was starting to realize she’s coming to the end,” Obama said. “And this woman that prepared me for death and talked to me about all this stuff and was like, ‘I’m ready to die, who needs old people around too long,’ and blah, blah, blah. She leaned over to me and said, ‘Wow, this went fast.'”
“I held her hand and said, ‘What are you talking about?'” Obama continued. “And she said, ‘Life.’ She said, ‘This went fast.'”
Obama said her mother made that observation even though she was “ready” for death.
“What that told me was that even when you tell yourself you’re ready, if you’re living a good life, you’re never really ready for it to end,” Obama said. “So I hope I feel that way β even though I will be ready for it, because it’s been good and purposeful β that I’ll feel like, ‘I wish I had more time.’ So I’m trying to live my life like that.”
It made Obama take stock of her own life now that she’s in her 60s.
“My husband thinks this is morbid β but at 61, if I am lucky, if I am truly blessed, I have like, 25 more summers,” she said.
In the 10 years since the end of Barack Obama’s second presidential term, it’s been a whirlwind of writing best-selling books, making appearances and parenting their now-adult daughters. Obama is now hoping to pump the brakes a little.
“I did a lot,” she said about the last decade. “Two, three books, blah, blah, blah. There’s a lot that happened, but it went by fast. And I’m at the stage of life where I want the next 10 years to go by slowly. Because guess what? I love life.”
“What I feel is that if I’m not mindful about it, the years slip away,” she continued. “And you wind up spending a year doing what? Did you do anything you wanted to? Did you spend time with the people you wanted to spend time with, doing the things that you wanted to do?”
While Obama says she’s “not afraid” of death, the goal is to put what she learned from her mother into action.
“With 25 more summers, I want to feel each one of them,” she said. “A day of nothing is one of those nice, slow days where you look up and go, ‘Oh man, it’s only noon.’ I want more of those.”
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