'Queen of the dirtbags': Son pens saucy obit for his trash-talking, ham-loving mother

Story Transcript

Andy Corren says telling the world about his mother has made her death a little bit easier to take. 

The New York talent agent's biting and irreverent obituary for Renay Mandel Corren — in which he calls her "the bawdy, fertile, redheaded matriarch of a sprawling Jewish-Mexican-Redneck family" — is making headlines around the world. 

"In the aftermath of this loss, it feels like a giant party just got thrown for Mommy," Corren told As It Happens host Carol Off.

"So we're going to all turn our frowns upside down and continue the party, because sharing her this way has just truly taken the sting out of the sadness of losing your parent."

Renay Mandel Corren died at the age of 84 on Dec. 11 in El Paso, Texas, from complications related to diabetes and sepsis. She leaves behind five children and "far too many grandchildren and great-grandchildren to count," said Andy.

Her life, Andy said, was never perfect — but it was always interesting.

"This is the story of a woman that you might have walked by …a hundred or a thousand or ten thousand times. A woman who wore beautiful, brightly bedecked shirts and scarves. A woman who was heavy, but not heavy of heart. And an older woman, a poor woman, a mom of many, many children. A really average life in passing — and yet the most extraordinary stories constantly would happen with and around her because this was a woman who was not a passive observer to her life. She was in it and led by example," he said. 

"It was a very interesting experiment to try to condense a life filled with misadventure down to 1,000 words."

What she was bad at 

There were a lot of things in life at which Renay did not excel.

She was was unlucky in love, her son said, leaving behind a string of failed marriages.

And she was no domestic goddess, either. She couldn't cook or clean. She was broke all her life, and often worked multiple jobs to make ends meet, frequently leaving her kids to fend for themselves.

"Her approach to parenting was virtually hands off. That's not an exaggeration," Andy said. 

"We didn't have a parent coming home to make us dinner. My mother enrolled me in bread-baking camp when I was nine years old…. And it wasn't because she was trying to, you know, warm the sparks of a nascent baker in my heart. It's because she wanted biscuits on time, on demand."

She also ate too much, partied too hard, and was a notorious liar, he said. 

What she was good at 

But imperfections aside, Andy says his mom was fun-loving, vivacious, vibrant and hilarious.

In her obit, he writes: "Here's what Renay was great at: dyeing her red roots, weekly manicures, dirty jokes, pier fishing, rolling joints and buying dirty magazines. She said she read them for the articles, but filthy free speech was really Renay's thing."

In fact, he says some her greatest heroes were erotic magazine publishers like Playboy's Hugh Heffner and Screw's Al Goldstein.

"If you're a single, horny mom in the South in the '70s, well, who was going to have the most robust expression of the First Amendment?" Andy said.

"And she read deeply, filth. My mother wasn't sitting around reading, you know, Dickinson and Coleridge."

She was also fiercely proud of her children and grandchildren — especially, Andy insists, the gay ones like him. 

"She was really emphatic that she had a hand in all of the gayness in my family, that that was all on her and that she did that, and she was so proud of that," he said.

A godless lover of ham

Some of his mother's greatest passions in life, he says, were bowling, cards, cribbage, dirty jokes, atheism and ham.

She was raised above a deli in McKeesport, Penn., by "two really Orthodox, old-world, Yiddish speaking, Hungarian Jews," Andy said. According to legend, she would regularly sneak out at night when she was young, break in to the deli, and "gorge on ham."

"So there's this little fat girl kind of sneaking outside in the middle of the night to taste this forbidden fruit of Judaism — ham," he said.

"I believe those purloined slices of ham were really what got her started on her long and robust relationship with atheism."

Renay's family will celebrate her unconventional life at the B&B Bowling Lanes in Fayetteville, N.C., on May 10, which would have been her 85th birthday. Literally anyone who wants to come is invited.

According to the obituary, the family requests "absolutely zero privacy or propriety."

"We're going to give the queen of the dirtbags a gonzo and rousing farewell, the kind she would love and the kind she truly deserves," Andy said. "And it's going to be filled with carbs."

Written by Sheena Goodyear. Interview produced by Sarah Cooper and Sarah Jackson.