These past few months have been a bevy of emotions as we have suffered the loss of three family members. Facebook condolences are not enough. I’ve written here before about celebrities we’ve lost, people I admired from a distance, but I kept putting off something much closer to home. These three couldn’t have been more different from each other, and they all deserve more than a passing mention. So this one is for them.
Mandy Jo Palen (1994–2026)
Mandy was my cousin, one of the Rathbun clan. My brother and I came into that ginormous family through my stepdad, and by the time the younger cousins were growing up, we were heading off to college and out of Illinois. So I never got to spend as much time with Mandy or any of the other “youngsters”.
But I can tell you this: Mandy and her sisters, Megan and Molly, were always the goofiest, funniest little girls, and we loved seeing them. Mandy especially. Next to her, her sisters seemed downright demure.
Mandy was generous with her time, and I saw it firsthand. Every year we hold a blood drive at Delavan Baptist Church in memory of our daughter, Summer, and Mandy came down for it again and again. Those blood drives are really how I got to know her these last couple of years. She was so sweet, and I’ll always be grateful she kept showing up for us. I saw her just a week before we lost her, and I’m so thankful I got that time.
Mandy passed away on July 5, 2026, at just 32 years old. I could write a novel about how that is far too young. Anyone who knows our family knows how painful it is to lose someone so young, and of everyone in this post, losing Mandy has galled me the most.
Rest in peace, Mandy. I hope you’re surrounded by horses and cats and God knows what other animals, smothering yourself in all of them.
Mike Bowen (1963–2026)
Mike was my wife Angela’s cousin, the son of her mom’s brother, Uncle Danny. For years he was something of a lost family member. Uncle Danny never really talked about him. After Danny passed, Mike reached out to us, and around 2010 we spent a day with him in Missouri, when our kids were still little.
Mike was from Palmyra, Missouri, and served in the U.S. Army. He eventually made his home in Sömmerda, Germany, with his wife, Inga. We met her a couple of times, and she was very kind. Not long after we met, he moved back to Germany, but that wasn’t the end of it. He came back once and spent a weekend with us in Pekin for the Marigold Festival, and we had a great time. In between, he’d call, FaceTime and Zoom us from Germany.
It became a tradition. Whenever we went up to Angela’s aunt and uncle’s house in Iowa for a holiday, usually Thanksgiving, Mike would get on a Zoom call and go around the room, talking to every single one of us. I loved it. My favorite part was watching him lecture my kids about listening to their parents. He was old school that way. He could be very serious, but he could laugh too, and I could tell that if we’d had more time together face to face, we would have had some good times.
Mike loved his garden. And he loved his German beer, especially those tall bottles, which he’d happily tell you were the best beer in the world. The picture I’ll always have of him is a man in overalls, relaxed, with one of those bottles close by.
Mike had been fighting cancer, and he suffered quite a bit. Because he was so far away, and because Inga speaks only German, we learned of his passing quietly, through a condolence message a friend left on his Facebook page on August 20th. We don’t know much more than that yet. But we know he found his way back to a family that hadn’t known him, and we’re grateful he did.
Rest in peace, Mike.
Maria Elena Valdez (1949–2026)
Maria was my sister-in-law Dawn’s mom. After Dawn’s brother passed away, Maria moved up from Texas to Central Illinois to be near Don and Dawn.
She could have been a fish out of water, but she wasn’t. She embraced it completely and lived it up here like she’d been here all her life. She loved city life and traveling, and she especially admired the architecture of Peoria.
That’s no small thing with our family. We’re known for massive family parties, and for being way too personal and overstepping a boundary or two. Just ask any girlfriend I ever brought home as a kid. Coming into our family can be daunting, and plenty of people have felt a little overwhelmed. Not Maria. She slipped right into everything. Almost all of our get-togethers have a theme, a dress-up, or some unspoken rule that you have to do something or bring something, and she was always game for all of our reindeer games. If complete strangers were there, she got to know every one of them. She loved all the kids. I genuinely think she enjoyed her time with our family, and we sure enjoyed her.
It’s funny, because I think of how goofy Mandy was, and Maria was like an older version of that same spirit, goofy in her own way.
I once ran into her at Walmart in Morton. She lit up and said, “Hey, how are you doing?” Talking to her felt like getting a hug. I took a selfie with her and sent it to Dawn, and I’m so glad I did.
Maria passed away at home on September 22, 2026, at 77.
Honestly, I’m probably remiss in not knowing more about Maria’s life. I mostly saw her at family gatherings, and that’s not where you sit around talking about someone’s life story. From what I know, it was an eventful one, and she overcame whatever was dished out to her. She never seemed to want to dwell on anything heavy anyway. She was always smiling and happy, no matter what. And she definitely did things her way, which is huge. Rest in peace, Maria.
I’ll be honest. I started this post to write about Mandy. Then we lost Mike, and then Dawn’s mom, and every time I sat down, it felt like I was doing a disservice to all of them. I know it’s not about me, it’s about them. But you want to get it right the first time, and you don’t want to feel like a schmuck. So here it is, a little late but from the heart.