Catherine O’Hara Showed Us It Was OK To Be An Imperfect Mom

I’ve always had a soft spot for actors who can play completely opposite characters, like it requires zero effort; Catherine O’Hara was one of the best.

O’Hara, who starred in “Home Alone,” “Schitt’s Creek,” “Best in Show” and “Beetlejuice,” died at just 71 years old, her team told celebrity.land on Friday. Instantly, my eyes welled with tears when I found out on Instagram, and I asked myself, why am I emotional about her death?

Surely, she was a great actor, but I’m not one to cry at the loss of a celebrity I only know from television shows and movies. I was sad when Heath Ledger and Brittany Murphy died because their lives were cut far too short. In my own way, I mourned their deaths, but I didn’t cry. As I thought about O’Hara — an unforgettable, vivacious woman — I remembered why I love her so much. Suddenly, my tears made perfect sense.

“Home Alone” was released in 1990, when I was only in first grade. I was a mama’s girl, closer to my mother than anyone else in my world. From the moment I first saw the beautiful, red-haired mother Kate McCallister on the big screen, I recognized a mom who cared about her family. I followed her from first-class seats on American Airlines when she first realized she’d left her son at home to the airport in “Home Alone 2” where she screamed “Kevin!” at baggage claim. At the time, I was just a young girl, and Kate’s commitment to making her way home to be with her son on Christmas in “Home Alone” triggered the warmth every kid yearns for; she became the movie mom of my generation.

Fast forward to 2011 when I joined the land of motherhood myself — it wasn’t long before I was rewatching “Home Alone” with my boys every holiday season and seeing O’Hara in a whole new light. Suddenly, she was me; a mother trying to maintain a household, the lives of multiple children, work and literally everything in between. Like me, she was imperfect and prone to mistakes that inevitably creep in when life becomes overwhelming. As a child, Kevin McCallister became the kid I looked up to for his bravery and cleverness in defeating Harry and Marv, but as a mother, Kate showed me that imperfection is enough.

In 2015, just when I thought I couldn’t love O’Hara any more than I already did, she joined the cast of “Schitt’s Creek” and gave me my favorite television series and graced Hollywood with a beloved character like no one else ever seen on screen before. At the Rosebud Motel, Moira Rose proved that elegance and class don’t stem from luxurious living quarters, but from within. She reminded me that being a woman with a mighty personality who doesn’t fit into the mold society sets for us is the best way to be, and it was OK if folding in the cheese wasn’t a recipe step I’d ever completed. Once again, she was an imperfect mother, and I could be, too.

In 2019, O’Hara told the New Yorker that she was initially scared of being on stage.

“My crutch was, in improvs, when in doubt, play insane. Because you didn’t have to excuse anything that came out of your mouth. It didn’t have to make sense,” she said.

In that moment, I realized she was the same perfectly imperfect woman in real life, and I loved her even more for it. At that same time, as I was testing the waters of the writing world, hoping to inch my way into the community I’d watched from afar for so long, she gave me inspiration to ignore the fear and the negative voices telling me I wasn’t enough. Because of her, I pushed on.

I don’t often mourn the loss of someone I only know from the big screen. But O’Hara as Kate McCallister was the on-screen mother my 6-year-old self recognized as flawless, despite her imperfections. She later became the mother I looked up to for being unapologetically herself; Moira never lost herself in motherhood and that was something to celebrate.

Thank you, Catherine, for guiding me all the way from childhood to motherhood and beyond. Millennials like me couldn’t have asked for a better teacher.