It's been a while since I've written. Part of me still feels strange doing so, even after the rest of my daily life has gone back to "normal". The loss of my mother-in-law in December was hard on the whole family, and I'm glad to have taken this time to adjust and process things. She was a big part of what inspired the life that my husband and I live, and what inspired me to write about it on this blog. After some consideration, I feel okay about writing about her on here. I don't think she would mind, though she might have blushed a bit and said "oh, garsh..." and hidden her laugh behind her hand.
I was so lucky to have known her, and I am so grateful to her for the love and support she gave us. I'm so glad that she was well enough on our wedding day to be there, to adjust Hubbybunch's arsaid and take her lovely photographs. In the few years that I knew her, I found a true friend in her. She was so kind to me, despite the fact that I'm a little strange... but then again I don't think there was a person who walked this earth who she wasn't kind to. She was a great mother, and helped to raise my Hubbybunch to be a great man. I don't think I could ever express how thankful I am for that.
Grief is a strange thing... it has its peaks and valleys, and one minute you're laughing and the next you're in tears. The other day, I was singing to myself while washing the dishes, in a very cheerful mood... and I saw a little piece of paper sticking up out of one of her cookbooks, a flag for a recipe that she enjoyed, or wanted to try. And then all of a sudden the grief just hits you, like being punched in the stomach. The reality that the person you love is gone and not coming back rushes in and drowns out any other thought. I deal with it by consciously shaking it off, by keeping busy... but that only works for so long. Eventually, I have to sit down, and remember, and cry, and remember that we were lucky to have her in our lives for as long as we did.
This is the first real loss I've experienced in my adult life. My grandparents all passed away when I was quite young... before mortality really meant anything to me. All I knew back then was that I was sad, and my whole family was sad, and that crying made me sleepy. As adults, the fact that death is inevitable, for everyone and everything, becomes much more real. The uncertainty and regret sets in. And our helplessness as we watch our loved ones suffer is almost unbearable. But as adults, we also come to understand that our sadness, our tears and pain at the loss of someone we care about, is part of how we pay homage to them. To wish that suffering away, either for ourselves or for our families, would be to take away one of the most important ways that we honor our dead.
