Every March, when the world starts waking up again — when the air softens and the light stretches a little longer — I find myself thinking of my mother. She was born in March of 1939, in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina, and she carried that early‑spring energy with her all her life: steady, hopeful, stubborn in the best way, and always ready to bloom again no matter what winter had thrown at her.
Momma — Shirley Diane Carlisle Fisher — lived a life stitched together with grit, humor, and a kind of love that didn’t ask for attention but quietly held everyone up.
She grew up in and around Roanoke Rapids, graduated from William R. Davie High School in 1958, and by the next year she had met and married the love of her life, my daddy, Horace Ray Fisher Sr. Together they built a family: me, Craig, and Michael. And like so many women of her generation, she worked hard — really hard — weaving at J.P. Stevens until she retired in 1991 after Daddy passed. That job wasn’t glamorous, but she did it with pride, because it helped build the life she wanted for us.
And then, in one of the bravest chapters of her story, she and my dad adopted her first two grandchildren, Lacey and Josh, and raised them as a single parent after dad passed away. She didn’t hesitate. She didn’t complain. She just opened her arms and did what needed to be done. That was Momma in a nutshell: love first, questions later.
She loved her family fiercely — her children, her grandchildren, her sisters Sandra and Doris, her brothers James, Danny and Butch, and the whole Carlisle‑Fisher constellation of nieces, nephews, cousins, and lifelong friends. If you were hers, you were hers. And if you weren’t hers yet, she’d probably feed you until you were.
And let me tell you: Momma loved a cruise. Mexico, Hawaii — if there was a ship, a buffet, and a deck chair with her name on it, she was ready. She worked hard her whole life, and when she finally got the chance to travel, she embraced it with the joy of someone who knew she had earned every minute.
For more than 40 years, she was part of the Harvest Temple Pentecostal Holiness Church, and that church family was woven into her heart. She sang, she served, she prayed, she laughed — and she loved those people deeply. They were her community, her anchor, and often her joy.
But the person who walked beside her most closely in her later years was her sister Sandra, her caregiver, her confidante, and her best friend. Their bond was something beautiful — the kind of sisterhood that feels like a lifelong duet.
When I think of Momma now, I don’t think about the day she left us. I think about the way she lived:
• The way she’d laugh with her whole face.
• The way she’d tell you exactly what she thought — whether you asked or not.
• The way she loved her children and grandchildren with a devotion that could move mountains.
• The way she held our family together through losses, storms, and seasons of rebuilding.
• The way she found joy, even after heartbreak.
• The way she kept choosing life — again and again.
I think about her hands, always busy.
Her voice, always warm. Her laugh, always infectious.
Her heart, always open.
And I think about how lucky we were — how lucky I was — to be her son. I think about the nights we'd talk for hours on the phone telling her my deepest problems; the night I told her I was gay and she said, "Yes, I know. I was waiting on you to tell me."
Momma lived a full, complicated, beautiful life. She loved deeply, worked tirelessly, and gave generously. And even now, years later, her legacy is still unfolding in the lives of her children, her grandchildren, great-grandchildren, her remaining siblings, and everyone who ever felt the comfort of her presence.
Every March, I celebrate her.
Not her absence — her life.
Her laughter.
Her strength.
Her stubbornness.
Her tenderness.
Her faith.
Her love.
Happy birthday, Momma.
Thank you for everything you poured into this world.
We’re still carrying it.
We always will.
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