In July, NPR host Scott Simon made headlines after tweeting his mother’s final weeks, medical struggle, and death. Then last Thursday, journalist Spencer Ackerman posted a remarkable series of heartfelt and revealing tweets commemorating his mother Bette Lynne Cohen, who passed away the same day after a seven-year struggle with cancer. She was 62.

Ackerman, a former WIRED staffer who now covers national security for The Guardian, spent 14 tweets memorializing not only his mother’s loves — the Yankees, “Little” Steven Van Zandt — but also her rebellions. She lied to the Army to get her brother home from Vietnam, Ackerman wrote, and smuggled Native American activist Leonard Peltier into Canada in a boat.