Ben Affleck’s late mother, Christopher Affleck, fulfilled her dream to watch her grandson graduate just two days before she died.
Earlier this week, the Affleck family confirmed the matriarch, best known by her nickname Chris, ‘passed away peacefully in her sleep’ on June 2, aged 83, just six months after she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
Neither of her sons, Casey or Ben, has posted about her death publicly, but an obituary in the Boston Globe has commemorated her life as a Harvard graduate, lifelong activist, public school teacher of 35 years and loving mother and grandmother.
Perhaps the most poignant detail comes towards the end, which revealed she was able to make her final wish come true.
It reads: ‘Her greatest wish after her diagnosis, however, was to live to see her grandson graduate high school. She did so, attending with her family on May 31, 2026. She died peacefully, in her sleep, two days later.’
Although it doesn’t state which grandchild’s graduation she attended, it’s likely Casey and Summer Phoenix’s son, Atticus, who turned 18 this year.
In the tribute, it says that her five grandchildren ‘were the animating force of her last two decades.’
She shared her two sons with her ex-husband Timothy Affleck, and even played a hand in launching their Hollywood careers.
She connected the Gone Girl star with her former Harvard roommate, casting director Patty Collins, which gave him a foot in the door.
‘A friend of my mom’s was a casting director so, really as kind of a lark, I had a couple of acting jobs that had just enough exposure to give me the option to continue if I wanted to,’ he told Parade in 2007.
He added: ‘I followed through with it. Then, basically, came the next stage: should I continue to act or not?’
Her most notable red carpet appearance is likely at the 1998 Oscars, where lifelong friends Ben and Matt Damon (who also brought his mother) eventually nabbed the Academy Award for their movie Good Will Hunting.
He recalled to Vanity Fair: ‘We were sitting next to our moms and we won, and we kind of hugged our moms. I remember how everyone had made such a big thing out of it as if this was such a novelty.
‘I remember thinking, being insecure, like: “Why? Why is it weird that we’re bringing our moms?” Who else do you think we would bring?”
‘There was nobody else that was going to go. That was it. Of course our moms were gonna go.’
Elsewhere, she remained a staunch social-political organiser throughout her life, protesting against the Vietnam War, joining Obama’s presidential campaign trail.
As well as attending her grandson’s high school graduation, she also managed to complete one last project, taking oral histories of her friend Josh Laub’s time as a principal in the South Bronx.