A tragedy has struck the family of former President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama.
Michelle Obama’s mother, Marian Robinson, has died at the age of 86, reports said. Michelle made the announcement Friday via a joint Instagram post with her husband, informing followers that Robinson “passed peacefully this morning.”
“My mom Marian Robinson was my rock, always there for whatever I needed. She was the same steady backstop for our entire family, and we are heartbroken to share she passed away today,” the post said.
Adding several slides to the post, the couple wrote, “We wanted to offer some reflections on her remarkable life.”
The Obamas described Robinson as full of “wisdom” and added that she was “nonjudgemental.” Robinson had the “deep understanding that the world’s roughest edges could always be sanded down with a little grace.”
One of seven children, Robinson grew up on the South Side of Chicago, Page Six reported, adding that her father used to “wake the kids up at sunrise by blasting jazz records as an alarm clock,” so she “learned early that even in the face of hardship, there was music to be found.”
She went to school to become a teacher before she began work as a secretary, and she “fell quickly and madly in love with Fraser Robinson, another South-Sider.” After the couple married, they had two children: Michelle and her brother, Craig Robinson.
Marian “volunteered for the PTA,” “taught her children to read at an early age,” and gave them the “strength and confidence to walk to school — and out into the world — all on their own.”
“She once chewed out a police officer who had accused Craig of stealing a bike, demanding that the adult apologize to her son,” the family noted, adding that she and her husband would nightly “hold court at the dinner table,” teaching their kids “to believe in the power and worth of their voices.”
Marian’s family described her as “wholeheartedly supportive,” which included their daughter’s decision to wed “a guy crazy enough to go into politics.”