Theresa Antoinette (Muzzin) Canfield

Theresa Antoinette Canfield passed away peacefully on Sunday, May 9th, 2021 at Sparrow Hospital. She was just shy of 75 years old. 

Theresa was born on June 16, 1946 in Detroit, Michigan to Yolanda and Angelo Muzzin. She attended St. Gregory’s Catholic School and Wayne State University, and had a long career at Citizens Insurance. She is survived by her husband of 52 years, Thomas Leroy Canfield, their son Chad, his wife Liz, and their three granddaughters, Grace, Erin, and Maggie. Theresa is also survived by her brothers and sisters-in-law, Joe and Pat Muzzin and Dino and Doreen Muzzin, as well as many loving family members and friends. They are comforted knowing that she is now with her parents, her brother and sister-in-law, Vic and Pat Muzzin, and other loved ones.

Theresa was a creative, compassionate, and loving person. She loved to show off her butterflies and her garden, especially her tomatoes, and was always eager to sit down and have a long conversation with those she cared about. Tom and Chad were the absolute pride of her life, until her three grand-babies came along. She was always generous with her time and creativity, and no one was more grateful to experience that than her granddaughters. Theresa had many nieces and nephews who were blessed to be able to lean on her for guidance and wisdom, and for whom she was a trusted friend and confidant. 

She disliked Olive Garden, The Godfather, and Cards Against Humanity. She liked Red Lobster, her old Chrysler LHS, “just a taste” of Asti Spumante, and the dulcet tones of Emeril Lagasse. She ran away to California with some friends for a little bit in her late teens, and stayed there until she ran out of money. She was so funny, and she and Tom complemented each other well in her later years. Their love language was words of affirmation demonstrated by reminders of whether or not a dish belonged in the sink, watching MSNBC with the volume turned up to a million, and cracking themselves up over their own jokes. They didn’t like to hold hands much when they were younger because of the expansive height difference between them, but in her last few years they became very affectionate, surprising even the most cynical of us. Tom said that when they first met, his bride used to come clean his apartment and cook him a meal as an excuse to flirt with him, and that she made the first move. Tom brought great comfort to his wife during her final months, and the handsome couple was very much in love. 

Theresa was an incredible listener, and her advice was never overly drawn out. She taught us to listen to what people say before we make judgments on their character. She also taught us how to make puppets out of the dead corn stalks from the field across the street and sew tuxedos for our dolls. She was an avid “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” watcher until the year she decided to give it up for Lent. Theresa was an amazing cook; she was notorious for downplaying her own creativity and culinary skills, but anyone who had the pleasure of eating her cooking knows that she was full of it. She was a perfectionist. Frustratingly enough, she wasn’t a “recipe” kind of girl. When you asked her for a recipe, she could really only tell you that she might have put a pinch of this or “about a can” of that. She loved Vegas and the Bahamas, but above all, she loved the casino. Soaring Eagle, a local Michigan casino, was her stomping ground, particularly toward the end when she couldn’t travel far. She was a sight to see with her walker, which had a convenient seat for quick use in the buffet line, and she could move that thing at a pretty good clip with her Soaring Eagle frequent-flyer lanyard swinging from her neck. 

She died as she lived, surrounded by the people who love and cherish her the most. She will be remembered by us as a kind and generous soul; gentle, but fierce when she needed to be. In her honor, we will continue to hatch caterpillars into butterflies every summer, tend our tomato plants, and undergo numerous failures as we attempt to recreate her spaghetti sauce recipe. 

We will be saying goodbye to our beloved wife, mother, grandmother, aunt, sister, and friend with a visitation from 2:00 to 6:00 pm on Friday, May 14th. Funeral mass and celebration of her life will be held on Monday, May 17th at 11:00 am at St. Agnes Catholic Church in Fowlerville, MI. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that you make a donation to the National Kidney Foundation.

To send flowers to the family, please visit our floral store.