Sisters go viral for the hilarious—and sweet—way they’re grieving their late mom
Grief is unpredictable and messy. You can’t define it or create rules to contain it — it simply
exists in its own way. Two sisters on TikTok prove that with their joyful (and hilarious!) grieving
process, and we’re obsessed with it. Their unique way of coping with the loss of their mom is
bringing light and laughter to the masses in a viral video.
“Confessions to our dead mom,” Sara Wollner captioned a video on TikTok that now has 20.2
million views. She and sister Katie Riggins appear in the video, confessing all the funny mishaps
that have occurred since their mom Karen died of pancreatic cancer in Albany, New York, last
July.
“Number one, we didn’t know that we had to file your taxes,” Wollner says with a laugh as
Riggins affirms, “Nope!” I mean, seriously, how are we supposed to know these things if our
moms don’t tell us?
Between fits of wheezing laughter, the two girls explain how Riggins didn’t realize that she
needed “to get my own insurance policy,” so she drove “an uninsured car” for seven months!
She also ended up getting her mom’s license plates suspended. “We know you had the same
license plate for years, so R.I.P. to ‘AZK’ or whatever the numbers were,” Wollner says.
“And to you, mom,” Riggins quips. These girls are laughing so hard they’re crying, and it’s the
only way we want to mourn ever again.
Other confessions to their dead mom include Wollner getting the stomach virus and skipping their older sister Megan Dixon’s baby shower, so Riggins had to do “the whole thing” by herself. Oops! Riggins
revealed how she attempted to do “a charity walk for cancer,” but things didn’t go according to
plan.
“I couldn’t finish it. And I think I broke my foot.” Well, it’s the thought that counts, right?
“I don’t want you to think I didn’t cry at your funeral because I didn’t care,” Wollner says in the
clip. “I was so pregnant that if I cried, I would have thrown up,” she explains with a laugh.
“Lots more to come,” Riggins concludes. “We’ll continue to disappoint you as time goes on.”
The video has racked up over 37 thousand comments. “Your moms like ‘Lord, send me back,
NOW,’” one person commented.
“You two should become grief counselors,” another suggested.
Others opened up about how healing this video was. “I lost my mom over a year and a half ago
and I’ve been very depressed BUT seeing this video and your perspective is so refreshing and
heartwarming,” one person wrote.
Another said, “My mom passed in July 2020, I need to tell her that she is being taken to court by
one of her creditors.”
In an interview with TODAY published Thursday, Wollner opened up about her late mom’s sense
of humor. “We called her ‘Crazy Karen’ because she always had a comeback and she loved to
poke fun at herself,” she said.
Riggins added, “We lost our dad when we were little so it was us girls against the world. When
something bad happened, Karen would say, ‘Let’s laugh about it and keep it moving.’”
“Our family motto was, ‘We are women, hear us roar.'”
The sisters received such a huge response, they made a follow-up video captioned: “Part 2:
Konfessions to Kare.”
“So, I had a little bit of a situation, and I had to move twice in two months,” Riggins recalls. “And
on the second, chaotic move, I… somehow a box landed on my stove, and the stove may or
may not have turned on, and the box caught on fire…and my new apartment smelled like
smoke,” she says through tears of laughter.
“Almost immediately evicted,” adds Wollner. These two need their own reality show STAT!
“Death is a taboo topic … and grief doesn’t have a timeline or an endpoint,” Wollner told
TODAY in the interview. “We’ll always grieve our mom and we believe this is how she’d want us
to cope.” We don’t even know Karen, but all of a sudden she is #MomGoals!
“There’s no right or wrong way to grieve,” Riggins added. “People may feel judged to laugh
during grief but it doesn’t mean you aren’t sad or don’t miss that person…we have to navigate
this with humor because we have no other choice.” So sweet!
Looking forward to the next incredibly beautiful and wheezingly funny set of confessions. This is
exactly what the internet was made for.
