Alden - Margaret Elaine McCully (Vandenbosshe), 87, passed away peacefully in her sleep on January 23, 2026, on the farm she helped build. She would have been 88 on February 18.

She followed my dad, William Douglas McCully, and that feels about right. She always wanted to be around him. After he passed, every time she saw a photo of Dad, she would look at it and say, "I miss my buddy." Less than a month later, she is with him again.

Wherever we went, people knew my mom.

They didn't call her Margaret. They didn't call her Marge. They didn't even call her "Bruce's mom." They called her Mrs. McCully, their third-grade teacher.

She taught hundreds, maybe thousands, of kids to read beyond the words. She taught art. She taught calligraphy. She taught cursive back when it mattered, and she kept teaching it anyway. She wasn't here to follow trends. She was here to make kids feel safe, loved, and capable.

I was one of them.

If we went to the grocery store, the ice cream stand, or the donut shop, someone would stop us and say hello. It happened every time. Mom would smile like it was normal, because to her it was. She just did her job. Quietly. For decades. And it changed lives.

Something many people did not know is that Mom was a nun for the first few chapters of her life. Her name in the convent was Sister Jacinta. She joined after losing her parents when she was only 7 years old. She was raised by her sister Joanne and her brother-in-law Joe, and she carried that early loss with her. It never made her cold. It made her steady. It made her faithful. It made her the kind of person who could walk into a room and make it softer.

Mom was loving, caring, and welcoming. She was also the person who took the edge off Dad's nonsense more times than anyone can count. She had a gift for it. She could calm him down without even trying. If you saw Dad, you knew she'd be just a few steps away. In life and in death, I guess.

Mom was an artist in every sense of the word. She baked. She gardened. She drew. She painted. She farmed. She canned fruit and vegetables and donated them to the local food pantry. She could make something beautiful out of almost nothing. She could also find morel mushrooms like she had a secret deal with the forest. If you ever went hunting with her and she got quiet, you knew she had found a whole patch.

She met Dad the way farm stories are supposed to start. The backs of their farms touched, and one day he showed up on a little horse named Chappy, holding a rose and, because Dad was Dad, a bundle of radishes from his garden. From that moment on, he took care of her. And she took care of everyone else.

Over the last few weeks, I got to spend a lot of time with her. Not just a quick morning coffee, but real time. Taking her to see old friends. Sitting with her. Being present. Near the end, I read to her, the way she used to read to me when I was a kid.

It is hard to put into words what a gift that was. I am grateful I didn't miss it.

Margaret was preceded in death by her husband, William. She is survived by her son, Bruce, and his husband, Adam Kuester. She is also survived by her stepsons, Larry (Lynn) and Brian; foster children, Alice, Dawn Taylor Furlong and Sally Jo Myers; grandchildren, Sharon (Carlos), Bradley, and Oscar (Maria); and great-grandchildren, Anastasia, Aireanna, and Gabe. She welcomed countless others into her life who all became part of our family story.

If you are thinking about sending flowers or a card, thank you. Truly. But if you want to honor Mom in a way she would actually love, do something kind for someone today. Go out of your way to make them smile. Hold a door. Send the text. Pay for their coffee. Be the reason their day got a little better.

A memorial service for both William and Margaret McCully will be held on the farm at 8404 Ruttan Rd. in Alden, Michigan, at 1 pm on May 2, 2026.