By AMY STEELE
ADVICE FROM YOUTHFIRST
The first time I met her, she didn’t know I was dating her son. She was used to him bringing friends around, and he didn’t tell her any differently. My memory of her was that she had a thick southern accent. As I spent more time with her, I learned that she spoke the languages of football and the stock market – languages I didn’t speak. She was not interested in girly things; I was. She was interested in nature and loved birds. I’d had some bad experiences with birds; they terrified me. The more we searched for common ground the more we found that the only thing we had in common was our love for the same man, her son/my husband.
There was never any question that my mother-in-law and I loved and respected each other. It was a choice, one we never went back on.
Over the years, we developed a small list of common interests:
- The quirks, oddities and awesomeness of her son/my husband
- Our family vacation spot
- Her grandchildren/my children. Conversations really picked up when they came along!
Some of my favorite memories with her involve the trips she and I would take with the kids to the beach, and when she stayed with us for a couple of weeks after our second child was born.
There was lots of love, but there also were undercurrents of tension. She was respectful to a fault. She worried about offending us or overstepping, and to avoid this, she didn’t ask questions and rarely visited. Sometimes it felt like she didn’t care or didn’t want to be involved. There were certainly things I did, mostly unknowingly (except when it came to parenting choices), that must have bothered her, too.
She died unexpectedly this summer. Obviously, this has been difficult for my husband. My kids are grieving the loss of their beloved grandmother. I expected the sadness and sorrow I felt in the days after, but not the heartache and void that remains in my life without this woman, with whom I had little in common. It’s what I did share with her that matters the most to me in the world, her son and her grandchildren. Only she and I knew him the best; now it’s just me, and he’s hurting.
Did I ever thank her? Thank her for raising this man whom she protected and cared for when he was little, who she taught to cook and do laundry, taught to treat all people kindly, to follow his dreams, to be adventurous, and to love his family so well? I know I didn’t thank her for loving me, even though I’m probably not who she had imagined he would marry; even though I was a big part of the reason we lived in a different town; even though I never changed my mind about the birds; even though we didn’t visit as often as the kids got older. I think she knew, but it would have been so much sweeter to have told her.
Who do you need to thank? Who needs to know that your life is better because he or she is in it? It would make life sweeter for both of you if you told them.
Amy Steele serves as Youth First social worker at Resurrection School in Evansville.