Obituary Gone Viral: Mom Recounts Loving Her Son Despite Heroin Addiction

The Sweetest Mother's Day Gift!

His picture instantly caught my eye. His grin looked far too young to be in the obituary section.

But there he was: Tanner Moore.

The more I read about him, the more my heart broke. Before I knew it, I was weeping over a young man I’d never met.

He was a 4.0 East High School graduate in Des Moines, Iowa. A risk-taker. A beloved uncle, brother, son and friend.

His family’s final tribute in Wednesday’s Des Moines Register shared the simplest quirks about him – like how he loved nice shoes and how a wrinkle in his shirt drove him crazy. He seemed like an extraordinary young man.

His story continued, though, and it’s his mother’s raw account of loving her son through his heroin addiction that’s striking a chord with people across the country:

The call came late one night. With tears in his voice, a shaky son said, “Mom I’m leaving for Florida, can I please have my social security card? I’m going to treatment at a place far away from here. They are flying me down and I’m leaving in 2 hours. I’m tired of not knowing where I’m going to sleep the next day or when I’m going to eat again.”

Months later: “Mom I am doing so good here. I love where I am and the people…I’m going to make you proud Mom…I love you.”

Another call came. My crying son said: “Mom I’m on a corner in Georgia and I can’t stay in this house anymore. It’s raining and I don’t know where I am…Mom, please help me I’m scared and I’m so cold.”
Another call: “Mom I’m scared I’ll never be normal again, please help me.”

Yet another call: “I’m going to California Mom….a treatment center like Florida but I don’t want to go back to where I was, there is heroin on every corner. I swear I can’t get away from it… I love you mom.”

Annnd another: “…I’m so excited to come for Christmas that I can’t sleep at night. I don’t want to stay in town long…that’s not good for me.”

Once back in town, another call: “I don’t need you in my life Mom…I’ll never speak to you again.”

As parents when we bring children into the world we have a million hopes and dreams for them, none of which include a drug addiction or planning their funeral. But if the demons of life snatch hold of those we love dearly and shatter the hopes and dreams we once had for them — I hope we can all display the courage and strength of Tanner Moore’s mother.

Click here to read Tanner Moore’s full obituary.

So God Made a Grandmother book by Leslie Means

If you liked this, you'll love our book, SO GOD MADE A GRANDMA

Order Now!

Shelley Skuster

Shelley is the writer behind http://www.shelleyskuster.com/. She's a former award-winning news reporter who -- after years of infertility, two adoptions and a pregnancy -- decided to leave TV news to stay at home and focus on raising her three daughters -- ages three and under.

I Miss Having Parents

In: Grief

Grown daughter posing between smiling parents

I have been living with the ache of loss for so long that I truly don’t remember what it feels like not to carry it. Sometimes it rests quietly beneath my ribs, dormant and almost polite. Other times it rises without warning—on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon, in the middle of a coffee line—and cuts straight through me. Today, it was a song. I was waiting for my coffee when “Pictures of You” by The Cure drifted through the café speakers. I hadn’t heard it in 20 years. In my twenties, it meant heartbreak—young love unraveling, relationships ending before they were...

Keep Reading

What No One Tells You about Losing a Sibling

In: Grief

Nobody tells you that when you lose a sibling, your entire childhood flashes before your eyes. There’s no better witness to what you experienced growing up than that one person who was standing nearby for all of it. And when they’re gone, a part of that childhood and a part of that story goes with them, because it was only ever known between the two of you. There’s no last chance to say, “Remember when?” or to laugh about the things that made you laugh to tears together, a million times at the kitchen table. There’s no last conversation about...

Keep Reading

Grief Didn’t Break Me, It Rearranged Me

In: Grief

I survived losing my father after his long, grueling battle with cancer. It was one of the most difficult seasons of my life. I had a front row seat to watch cancer pick him apart piece by piece. When you lose a parent, you lose a part of yourself. They say time heals all wounds, but you never stop missing the good ones, and there are days when it feels like it just happened. By the grace of God, I survived, but I will always miss my father. Then, almost a decade later, I lost the career that helped me...

Keep Reading

I’m Learning To Be Soft and Strong

In: Grief

During the weeks we cared for my grandmother in hospice, survival mode felt necessary. There were medications to track. Visitors to update. Logistics to manage. I remember sitting on the couch that served as my makeshift bed and listening to the rhythmic hissing and puffing of the oxygen machine one night. While my mom showered off the day, I texted my sister updates and sent my husband a quick message of love. I could still smell the lavender candle we had lit earlier in the day to mask medical scents. The house was quiet, but my mind wasn’t. I was...

Keep Reading

The Legacy Our Mothers Leave Is In the Details

In: Grief

Woman's hands holding beautifully wrapped small gift

It has been two months and nine days since my mom passed away. The first several weeks were spent on the details and logistics of planning her service. She passed in December, so once her beautiful service had passed, I busied myself with the preparations for Christmas. By mid-February, I finally began to process some feelings of grief on a deeper level. The quiet of this less-busy season is allowing the grief to soak in a bit more. Not the big things; not the obvious, grief-heavy reminders that stop me in my tracks. Instead, I’ve been noticing the small things....

Keep Reading

You Never Get Over Losing Your Mother

In: Grief

It’s been 10 years since I last heard my mother’s voice. Ten years since I could pick up the phone and ask a question I already knew the answer to, just to hear her say it anyway. Ten years since someone loved me in that very specific, unconditional, occasionally annoying way that only a mother can. My mom died in 2015. And while “passed away” sounds softer, more polite, the truth is that she left. Suddenly. Permanently. With no forwarding address. She was gone. What I’ve learned in the decade since is not what I expected. I thought the biggest lesson...

Keep Reading

My Husband Is By My Side Through Every Storm

In: Grief, Marriage

The year 2025 began as a quiet storm. I was slipping into the fog of depression while navigating the early chaos of perimenopause, and some days simply getting out of bed felt impossible. My thoughts felt dark and heavy, my body unfamiliar, my energy nonexistent, and my moods uncontrollable. And yet, in the haze, there was one constant: my husband. He noticed the subtle shifts I barely acknowledged. The sighs, the quiet retreats into myself, the moments I almost broke. Instead of judgment or frustration, he offered presence. He held space for my struggle without trying to “fix” it, and...

Keep Reading

Losing My Mom Shaped Me As a Mother

In: Grief

Becoming a mother has a way of bringing old wounds back to the surface, even ones you believed had healed. I never imagined grief would surface so strongly in my motherhood journey. I thought it was something you carried silently, something that faded with time. But becoming a mother felt like my loss rising to its feet and saying, I’m still here There are moments when I reach for my phone to call my mom, only to be met with the reminder that I can’t. I want to ask her if what I’m feeling is normal, if the exhaustion softens,...

Keep Reading

Memories of My Grandma Live On

In: Grief

Be intentional. Take the picture. Create memories. Because even when we think we have all the time in the world, one day it will slip away. Sadly, this is exactly what happened to my grandma and me. While I was growing up, my dad and his parents had a strained relationship, and they were estranged for about the first five years of my life. Thankfully, they reconciled, and my grandparents and I finally had the opportunity to establish a much-anticipated relationship. Though I was never able to form the same closeness with them as I had with my maternal grandparents,...

Keep Reading

Netflix Captured What I’ve Treasured for 17 Years: My Daughter’s Room Exactly How She Left It

In: Grief, Motherhood

Girl's bedroom with posters on the wall and toys on the bed

It was a Sunday evening. I was alone, scrolling through Netflix, searching for something, anything, to fill the quiet. Then I stumbled upon a documentary I had no clue existed, called All the Empty Rooms. After reading the description, my heart immediately went out to all the parents who contributed to this film, and to the man behind it, Steve Hartman, whose compassionate heart radiates in every frame. One statement he said hit me like a freight train: “What we need to talk about is the child that’s not here anymore.” Period. Powerful truth. Curiously, I started watching. Then I...

Keep Reading

25 Ways To Have "The Talk" With Your Kids

Kids

25 Ways To Have "The Talk" With Your Kids

Looking for Trains and other Ways Motherhood Changed Me

Kids

Obituary Gone Viral: Mom Recounts Loving Her Son Despite Heroin Addiction

If you liked this, you'll love our book, SO GOD MADE A GRANDMA

Shelley Skuster

I Miss Having Parents

What No One Tells You about Losing a Sibling

Grief Didn’t Break Me, It Rearranged Me

I’m Learning To Be Soft and Strong

The Legacy Our Mothers Leave Is In the Details

You Never Get Over Losing Your Mother

My Husband Is By My Side Through Every Storm

Losing My Mom Shaped Me As a Mother

Memories of My Grandma Live On

Netflix Captured What I’ve Treasured for 17 Years: My Daughter’s Room Exactly How She Left It

Get It Now

So God Made a Mother

Obituary Gone Viral: Mom Recounts Loving Her Son Despite Heroin Addiction

If you liked this, you'll love our book, SO GOD MADE A GRANDMA

I Miss Having Parents

What No One Tells You about Losing a Sibling

Grief Didn’t Break Me, It Rearranged Me

I’m Learning To Be Soft and Strong

The Legacy Our Mothers Leave Is In the Details

You Never Get Over Losing Your Mother

My Husband Is By My Side Through Every Storm

Losing My Mom Shaped Me As a Mother

Memories of My Grandma Live On

Netflix Captured What I’ve Treasured for 17 Years: My Daughter’s Room Exactly How She Left It

Previous Post

Next Post

You May Also Like