There is no denying I am a mama’s boy.

And last week I lost my mom. She died May 26 at age 84 after being under hospice care for the last six months and, for far longer than that, dealing with a myriad of health issues that chipped away at her quality of life.

I was the only child of a woman who had five miscarriages. To say she was doting and overprotective is an understatement. But she also instilled in me a passion for many of the things I continue to write about and love.

I didn’t have any older brothers and sisters to expose me to cool music at a young age. My earliest musical memories are of my mom singing along with Fifth Dimension or Barbra Streisand records while cooking.

Yes, my tastes definitely diverted from hers — more than once she referred to the music of my teens as “that hard metal crap” — but I inherited the joy that music brought her, even if KISS and Rush didn’t have much in common with Streisand and Barry Manilow (another one of her favorites).

She was my first favorite singer. When I think of the song “Moon River,” it’s her voice I hear, not Andy Williams’.

My earliest exposure to theater was hanging out during rehearsals when she played Marian Paroo, the female lead, in a church production of “The Music Man.”

I did a lot of theater when I was in school because I was loud (no teacher ever had trouble hearing me), mostly fearless and could memorize anything. But I also think I got cast because they knew they could count on my mom to make an awesome costume, whether I was Abraham Lincoln or a stew pot. Yes, I once played a stew pot. I don’t remember the name of the show, but I remember the costume my mom stayed up all night making.

My mom was a seamstress and an artist — two things I am not. However (and further proof that I was / am a mama’s boy), in junior high one year I had to take cooking, sewing, wood shop and metal shop, a different class each grading period. I got an A in cooking and sewing; I got a B in wood shop and metal shop.

Mom crafted, quilted, painted and macrameed. I’m pretty sure she left behind enough fabric to make a quilt big enough to cover the Mahoning Valley. She sold her creations, taught classes and co-owned a shop in Sandusky where other artisans could sell their work.

I know I didn’t fully appreciate her artistic abilities when I was younger. Franky, I don’t think I fully appreciated them in adulthood. But in retrospect, seeing her creative spirit ignited my own curiosity and interest when writing about art.

The one talent of my mom’s that I fully appreciated — one might say I overindulged in — was her skills in the kitchen.

Mom was an adventurous cook, despite having a very picky child and a very meat-and-potatoes husband as her primary audience. She had a refined palate and very particular tastes about certain things, but she was no food snob.

She sold hundreds of her Hungarian nut rolls and gave away at least as many. She ran the church kitchen for too many dinners and memorial lunches to count.

As I cleaned out her room at the nursing home last week, every notebook and notepad I found had recipes written in them that she’d copied out of a magazine or off of the TV, even though she no longer had a kitchen where she could make them.

I grew up in a house where food was love, and I never starved for either. In my 60 years, I never went to bed one night not knowing I was loved.

I always liked being an only child. I both craved the attention and cherished the privacy that came with it. I have a wife and two daughters I love very much, but losing my last parent has me feeling very “only” right now.

But in my career, my passions and my efforts to be a good parent and spouse, I know they’re both still with me in so many ways.

Andy Gray is the entertainment editor of Ticket. Write to him at agray@tribtoday.com.