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June 25, 2026
Today is my Mom's (Monica Koshuta) birthday.
Yet again.
I know - this seems to happen every year about the same time.
And it appears she has been doing this for a long time.
I'm not allowed to tell you how long, but I can tell you she was born the same year that Walt Disney first introduced the world to Goofy - seriously. - and her age rhymes with "nine teas fore."
The photo below was taken in 1952, the year before she graduated from nursing school.
She was twenty-one, living in a small town in the Pocono foothills, about to leave for New York City and a life that would take her further than she could have imagined.
From the VIP ward at Mount Sinai - where Frank Sinatra called the nurses' station to check on his mother, and Monte Proser of the Copacabana gave her a standing table beside the stage - to a private hour spent walking Princess Diana through six hospice rooms, patient by patient, before Diana danced with John Travolta at the White House that same evening.
In between, she married a spy, raised four kids on three continents, and collected the kind of stories most people only read about.
Three Presidents.
Two Popes.
A wedding dress - a gift from a grateful patient on 34th Street - that her daughter later wore on her own wedding day.
Stops in Cyprus, Rome, and Rio before landing back in Washington, DC, where the real second act was waiting.
That second act: pioneering hospice care for AIDS patients in the 1980s, at a time when compassion for the dying was apparently considered optional by many.
As Administrator of the Hospice of Washington, she made sure it wasn't.
She recruited Barbara Bush to the board.
She went on CNN.
She convinced the band Boston to present a $10,000 check in front of the White House gates to protest the lack of federal funding for AIDS care.
And when the board worried about what they would do if protestors showed up outside the hospice, her response was simple: "I will go out and talk to them."
When most people were thinking about winding down, she went back to school.
First a BA. Then a Master's.
Then a PhD in Nursing - completed at an age that would make most doctoral students feel slightly embarrassed about their own timelines.
For the past thirty years she has continued to volunteer - at the White House, in her community and her church.
She became a grandmother and a great-grandmother.
And every Christmas Eve, without fail, she makes five dozen Peroghi by hand for the family meal - because some traditions are non-negotiable.
Our whole family is grateful beyond words that she is still here - still sharp, still warm, still very much herself.
Happy Birthday, Mom.
Nine teas fore and still the most interesting person in the room.
We love you.
