Mark Wahlberg is not afraid to admit he was a mama’s boy. If it wasn’t for his late mother, Alma, he may not have had the wildly successful career he has had.
Sadly, Alma passed away in 2021 after battling dementia for a number of years. Fortunately, she had a great support system made up of her nine children to care for her in her final years.
Mark, who had as busy a schedule as anyone, couldn’t always be there for her physically, but he made it his priority to check on her each and every day.
In July 2021, a few months after Alam’s, Mark talked with Fatherly and reflected on the first thing he did in the morning for ten years: call his mother.
“The first phone call that I made every single day, for the last 10 years, was to my mom. And I don’t get to make that phone call anymore,” he said at the time. “And it’s heartbreaking.”
When Alma was still alive, she also gushed over her son’s commitment to calling her whenever he had the opportunity.
“Mark calls me from all over the world,” she told Today in 2018. “I don’t care if it’s 3 o’clock in the morning!”
Talking with Today again in 2019, Alma discussed the struggles she and her family went through while her children were growing up and reflected on the impact of Mark and Donnie’s rise to stardom with their music group New Kids on the Block.
“When I think about it, I had nine children, three girls and six boys, and they gave me a run for my money,” she remembered at the time. “What it took to survive — I mean, I had to get welfare food for God’s sake. So it was really tough.”
Her children truly looked up to her as the strong matriarch she was and continued to be until needing care for herself once she was diagnosed with dementia, to which her kids responded without hesitation.
Losing her was hard for all the Wahlberg kids, and Mark says he still listens to voicemails she had left just to hear her voice.
“She touched everybody that she met,” he told NBC last October. “She was truly an inspiration. All I have now is the recordings and the voicemails that she left me, and I listen to them quite often.”
Sources:
https://www.today.com/popculture/alma-wahlberg-watching-her-son-s-rise-stardom-new-kids-t157104
https://www.today.com/parents/mark-wahlberg-s-mom-was-his-first-phone-call-each-t226909
