Name: Sylvan Abbey Memorial Park & Funeral Home
Address: Clearwater, FL

My condolences go out to the smith family . rip to Margaret and late husband john    .From Charles Marcus IV, Clearwater, FL.

Your Great grands all said they love you always and they goin miss you 😘 

A wife, a mother, a grandma too, This is the legacy we have from you You taught us love and how to fight You gave us strength, you gave us might. A stronger person would be hard to find,
And in your heart you were always kind.
You fought for us all in one way or another
Not just as a wife not just as a mother. For all of us you gave your best And now the time has come for you to rest. So go in peace, you’ve earned your sleep,Your love in our hearts we’ll eternally keep.# Thank you for being you Love u & We will miss

Margaret & John Smith were a pair any child would have been blessed to have as parents. And with John being a long-haul truck driver (gone for weeks at a time) and me being nearly a decade younger than the next oldest, my siblings were largely already out of the house when I was young – so most of the time it was just me and her at home. I remember shopping for clothes with my mother every school year (always fresh). Decorating the Christmas tree and Easter eggs. Birthdays and all the large family summer visits, especially on the 4th of July. So many great memories I have with this great woman. I can’t balance an account or handle a tax return without thinking about her and how she taught me to handle finances. So much of who I am is because of Margaret T. Smith – right down to my crooked pinky finger! I love you Mama – Rest in Peace.

A night I’ll always remember with my mother – It was just me and her and she had showed me a picture of a stacked brick barbeque grill earlier in the week and asked me if I thought I could build it. It didn’t look too hard, so she went to wherever you’d get bricks back then. Well, it wasn’t as easy as it looked, so after several more trips for bricks and racks, it was finally finished later that night. We were exhausted – but proud of what we had done. And at age 13, it was one of the few things we did without some amount of conflict. It seems the date was 10/10/1985 (which is how I know I was 13). Because according to Wikipedia, that's the night the Cosby Show episode aired where they lip-sync’d the Ray Charles song – and I remember we watched that episode together after building the barbeque. I really enjoyed my mother that night and I flashed back to it every time we used that barbeque for like the next decade before it got removed.

That's just one of many small but great memories I have of my mother from childhood and after my becoming an adult. They just make me remember how much I LOVE her and will miss her greatly. She was a great woman (not perfect) – but who is? I'm not, and certainly wasn't when I was a teenager. And I'm blessed to have had her as my mother and as 1/2 of great parents that have now both left us in life.

As a child, I only remember one Christmas when I didn’t get exactly what I wanted. I asked my mother for an Atari (I wanted to play games). I’m not sure if she mistakenly bought the wrong thing, or if she knew what she was doing… But instead of an Atari, she bought me a computer (Texas Instruments TI-99/4A) – one of the first personal computers. I quickly learned how to type and program. Not only was I able to play games, but I could make my own. That one act (or accident) by my mother set my life on a path that every day since then has involved computers and technology. Thanks to her, I had a computer when almost no one did – and that gift sparked something in me that I still use to this day to make a living. I LOVE YOU Mother - not just for that, but for your MANY acts and sacrifices that have positively affected my life and the traits I take from you... I wouldn't be the person I am if not for you - and I like who I am.

OBITUARY

Margaret T Smith

January 4, 1941 – January 28, 2022

Sylvan Abbey Memorial Park & Funeral Home

Show your support

Add a Memory

Share Obituary

Get Updates

Services