Mother in laws, memories, and death

My mother in law was a looker.

It’s very strange, to go through old photos, and see what your parents and grandparents and their generation looked like when they were young. In general, they were beautiful, happy, and young! Like us. It surprises us, to think of them as being like that, because we always remember them as our parents---older, more worn down with the years, and simply, well….our parents. People who frown at our scandalous habits, yelled at our choice of dress, disapproved of our boy/girlfriends.

In the 1960’s, my mother in law was a beautiful young woman with photo after photo of herself at the beach with friends, on the arm of various men at parties, clearly having some scandalous habits of her own! But then there were other pictures, too---photos of her clearly adoring her three little kids. She had many loving photo albums, painstakingly handmade, of each of her children from their birth on (though we couldn’t find one that was exclusively of Frank---that was kind of funny, as everyone knows Frank was her favorite child). There were many pictures of her with her family, and pictures of her in every place imaginable---Switzerland, Singapore, Israel, etc. What an interesting life she had!

Many of you know my mother in law passed away on Thanksgiving morning, very suddenly. It has been hard to think of her as “dead”, as opposed to just away, since to everyone’s knowledge, she was just fine up until the actually event. Despite the fact there have been numerous phone calls, visitors, and even discussions with the funeral home, I don’t think besides the first shock of hearing the news, it had really felt real. Today, we had the long hard discussion of her memorial service, and we actually got to see her and say goodbye. It does seem more real now. But it’s actually been a lot of fun, really, putting her service together. You see, she was a very loving, happy person with a great sense of humor, and looking at her old photos and remembering her favorite things was a very easy thing to do. Over the past 10 years, she was pretty sick and was a tenth of her normal self, so it was very easy to forget that she used to be a funny, high energy person. But going over her old things reminded us of this.

She loved the Lord, and we have no doubt that she is with her daughter Karien, who died more than 20 years ago, so we have no sadness about where she is. And we are so grateful she died painlessly, quickly, without any suffering. That’s the kind of death everyone wants. We really mourn only for ourselves, you know? But what I think about most is my future children, and the sadness I feel that they’ll never know one of their grandmothers. That they will never be spoiled by her, never visit her during summer break, never hear grandma tell embarrassing stories about their dad. They’ll never learn to say “Oma”, the Dutch word for grandmother, with as much familiarity as I would wish.

I can’t tell you how grateful we are for the support we have received. Frank was supposed to be part of a wedding yesterday, a very happy event with so many of our friends who we haven’t seen in a year, but not only were the bride and groom so understanding about Frank backing out of the wedding, many of them got together and sent the most beautiful flowers to us. My chief resident called to tell me to take as much time as I needed, even though the resident covering for me went into pre-term labor and now everyone is scrambling to cover for me! There are so many other stories I won’t bore you with, but it’s been amazing.

I think about death a lot, as I’m thinking about going into end of life care as my specialty, and I was thinking about how we like to make death this scary, far-away thing. In America, as soon as someone dies, it’s like suddenly the person is gross. They are left to the hospital, no one wants to touch them or see them or have anything to do with their body, and if the body is seen again, it is with some sense of revulsion. I find it SO strange. We loved those people, in their bodies, for their entire lives---we should be able to say goodbye and deal with their bodies in a loving fashion as well. After all, we may believe the spirit has left and moved on, but the body held the one we loved for so many years---we should honor that! Anyway, it’s time to go through more pictures again. Thank you, everyone, for thinking of us and praying for us.