John McCain's mother,106, to attend son's burial.

John McCain's 'vivacious and rebellious' 106-year-old mother, Roberta, is expected to attend memorial services in Washington and his burial in Maryland later this week.

Roberta McCain, the wife of a Navy admiral and mother of a Navy captain, once said the middle child she called 'Johnny' liked to use her as an example of 'what he hopes his lifespan will be'.

But she now mourns her son, with whom she shared many similarities, including determination and a rebellious streak that the senator said he was 'grateful to her for the strengths she taught me by example'.

Her 'vivaciousness is a force of nature', he wrote in his final book published this year.  

The Vietnam prisoner of war, congressman, senator and two-time presidential candidate died of brain cancer last Saturday at his home in Arizona.

He was 81.

Roberta was only 20 and still in college when she eloped to Tijuana, Mexico, in January 1933 with a young sailor named John S. McCain Junior.  

The couple had three children — Jean, John and Joseph — within a decade.

The family lived in Hawaii, the Panama Canal Zone — where the senator was born in 1936 — Connecticut and Virginia. 

Roberta raised the children while her husband was away with the Navy and reportedly loved Navy life.

'To me, the Navy epitomizes everything that's good in America,' she told C-SPAN in 2008 during the presidential contest John McCain lost to Barack Obama.

It was in London when the couple were getting ready to attend a dinner at Iran's embassy that Roberta's phone rang with the news that two planes had been shot down and none of the pilots had ejected. 

When she later learned her son was alive and had become a prisoner of war she said it was 'the best news I ever had in my life.'

At the time of his death, the U.S flag could be seen flying at half mast above the White House.

The late senator will be memorialized at a service in Phoenix on Thursday before his remains are taken to Washington D.C. On Friday, there will be a ceremony for him at the U.S. Capitol building, where he will lie in state.

On Saturday will be his funeral service at the National Cathedral in Washington D.C. and he will be buried Sunday on Hospital Hill at Naval Academy Cemetery in Annapolis, Maryland. 

McCain had been a rare and outspoken Republican critic of Trump, accusing him of 'naivete,' 'egotism' and of sympathizing with autocrats. 

He made a decisive vote last year that killed Republican attempts to repeal Barack Obama's health care reforms, and Trump never forgave him. 

The sharp-tongued McCain had disagreements with many fellow politicians -- including inside his own camp -- but the Republican stalwart was widely recognized for his deep integrity, and condolences came swift from the highest reaches of American politics.

The Mail Online