A few days ago we got the call that my MIL passed away. Hubs took it very hard and he’ll be going to the funeral next week. His sisters and his late mom live in AZ and we live in NC so he will need to fly to get there. We can’t afford 2 plane tickets so he’ll be going on his own.
I know there are many women (and men too) who don’t get along or even like there MIL. I did. In fact, I loved that crazy old lady and I will miss her terribly. Don’t get me wrong, we didn’t agree all the time on things but I think that’s how it’s supposed to be. You think one way and someone else thinks another way. And, you don’t stop caring about that person just because you don’t agree on something.
I don’t like talking about my personal life mainly because my early years were pretty devastating to think back on. And I didn’t have a close knit family upbringing like so many other families did. So, when I met my soon to be MIL years ago, she welcomed me with open arms. She didn’t judge someone by what they said or what they thought. She always looked at someone by the actions they took. And she always told you how she felt about something even if you didn’t want to hear about it. She put it out there and held nothing back. She was sweet, she was kind and one of the nicest persons I have ever met.
I keep remembering the funny times we used to have and that always brings a smile to my face. Before she moved to AZ to be near her daughters she lived here in NC right down the road from us. It was a wonderful time. We would have a family gathering every weekend where we would visit and talk about things that were important to us while eating a really good home cooked meal and as soon as dinner was over we would bring out the dominoes or cards to play. Mom usually did the cooking but there were times I would bring dinner over and give her a break from cooking. FYI, I’m not the best cook in the world and I do my best but she didn’t care in the least because she knew it was something I did from the heart and she always gave me a big smile and told me how I was such a good cook.
Mom had a little cleaning business at the beach which is about an hour from us. In the summer time on the weekends, hubs and I would go help her clean condo’s. The work wasn’t always that hard and we would end up having something funny happen on the way to work or on the way back home almost every day, lol. One time in particular we were on our way home and it was raining really hard and I kept hearing a weird noise so I looked out the rear window and saw sparks were flying like crazy. I started to scream and told mom the car was on fire. She started to laugh and said it was nothing. It was just the exhaust pipe had been jiggly for awhile and now it was scraping the ground. And then she said she could still drive without the exhaust pipe so there was nothing to worry about.
Her car was really old and it was huge with 4 doors and the paint was peeling off and there was rust all over it and she said it was the best car she ever had. I remember lifting the back seat floor mat one day and seeing the ground below, lol. The hole wasn’t big enough to fall through and was at a place where you didn’t have to worry too much about it. And when I would tell her that she was driving a rust bucket of bolts she would just laugh.
That’s the type of person mom was. Hubs used to tell me stories about his mom growing up and how she hit him over the head one time with an iron skillet. lol. He was in his teens and was getting snarky and talking back to his mom one day after dinner and she kept telling him to be quiet but he wouldn’t listen and then he said the next thing he knew she picked up her iron skillet and hit him up side the head with it, lol. Well, he was out like a light and mom was screaming and crying thinking she had killed him. He came too and looked at her and said damn, Mom! why’d you do that for? So she hit him again for swearing, lol.
And you know, I think when you lose someone you love, in order to get through the pain you need to remember all those things that made you love that person to begin with. It won’t make the pain completely go away but it’s sometimes better to laugh about life then to cry about it all the time.