The Rest of the Story

Many of my readers may remember a blog I wrote last winter titled You Gotta Have Friends. In that blog, I introduced you to a little coffee shop in my community, called Café Kolache. It’s a place where we are part of small group that gathers in our little town of Beaver, Pennsylvania. We meet at 8:00 a.m., and usually coffee and chit-chat until close to 9:00. Ironically, some of us were not friends when we started going there, but because we are regulars each morning in the same place, conversations began taking place over table tops, and soon we were inviting each other to join in the conversation.


Interactions like our experience there…bringing strangers together to become friends…is not lost on Kristi and Hugh Harper who own and operate this gathering place. They have started a series of videos titled Everybody’s Got a Story. They asked several of us regulars to the shop to sit for improv-style conversations. Hugh Harper served as our quick-witted moderator. I saw the interviews before and after mine, and admit I was nervous because some of the questions were so random and off the norm. My personal 15-20 minute interview was whittled down to a webpage- manageable 3 minutes. You can view the video of my interview from a link on the Café Kolache website or the Café Kolache Facebook page.

Mother Mary at one of her "favorite" birthday parties.

The focus of the segment chosen for me was marriage. During the interview, I talked about my beloved mother-in-law, Mary. We often referred to her as “the gray-haired lady with the smiling face.” Those brief interview moments were not enough to do justice to our “mother” Mary, so in this blog, I want to share the rest of the story.

I know there are many women who can’t find a good word to say about their mother-in-law. In fact, I read an article recently¹ that said, “according to one study, 60 percent of mother/daughter-in-law relationships — compared to just 15 percent of son/mother-in-law relationships — are strained. Words like “infuriating,” “depressing” and “awful” are only some negative terms used to characterize these tense relationships.”

I wasn’t a young, new bride when I met Mary. Having survived some negative relationships prior to this marriage, I had known other mother-in-laws that were more like the stereo-typical, negative version that are the butt of many jokes. From the moment I met Mary she was kind and loving. Admittedly, I was a little suspicious at first, but soon came to know those qualities as her natural demeanor. My only regret about my relationship with her was that it wasn’t long enough. She only lived about ten more years after I married her son, but in that time I grew to love her very much. I think it’s safe to say she loved me too.

Raised one of seven children in a farm family, her young life was hard. She left home in her early teens to work to help support the family. Her life became better when she met and married her one and only husband. He got a decent job at a local mill, made extra money on the side by playing in a big band at night, they settled into a little Cape Cod bungalow, practiced frugal living, and raised three children.

As a typical post-war bride, she followed the natural order of wives in the 50’s as a stay-at-home mom. She never learned to drive, never handled the household budget, and never desired to make her mark out in the world. She went to work at the local bakery when the kids were older and her oldest daughter started college. It’s was her only post-marriage paid employment.

Soft-spoken, but tough, she was slow to anger, quick to love, willing to understand others, unassuming, and genuinely kind.

By the time I came to know her, she was already a survivor, losing part of a lung to cancer. I was part of the family when she suffered with those who survived the death of her only granddaughter in a terrorist bombing. She also survived the death of her husband, the death of her neighborhood friends, and some of her siblings. The years ticked on.

With each of these events her tiny body became even more fragile. Assisted living became a necessity as her health and physical well-being deteriorated. It was fortunate the she was able to stay in her own home. With all of us children, and paid nursing staff working together, we were able to manage her care.  
  
You would naturally think the memory of losing someone so dear isn’t one you would recall with fondness, but in Mary’s case, I do. She had the best death ever, if there is such a thing.

Once her body started to shut down, the end was coming quickly. As families do, we all came together to be there for the end. For the last hours of her life, as a family, we sat on the bed with her, looked at pictures, played old recordings from her husband’s big band days, sang, and talked to her. We celebrated her life and her memories and her love while she was there among us. Could she hear us? Maybe, maybe not.

As each hour ticked away the breathing became slower, until she was finally at rest. In the end, each of us was still holding onto her, wishing for just a few more moments. It was the end of a life well-lived. After 15 years, I can’t mention her name without tears in my eyes. I still miss her.

Mother Mary’s advice to me when I married her son was that we should “take care of each other.” I try to take care of her son, but it was a blessing to have the opportunity to take care of her too.

And now you know the rest of the story.

You can view other Everybody's Got a Story videos at   www.cafekolache.com

If you enjoyed this, please share it with others. 

http://wisewomenofage.blogspot.com/2015/02/you-gotta-have-friends.html

¹http://www.today.com/id/32450000/ns/today-today_health/t/are-you-wired-dislike-your-mother-in-law/#.VZBzzkb1KJ8

Love Is Like a See-Saw

I saw this “cartoon” on Facebook recently. I don’t know where it originally came from, so I can’t give proper credit to the humorist who developed it, but it reminded me of something that happened about 25 years ago. 

My husband and I had just married about two years before this occasion. I certainly didn’t consider myself a newlywed because I’d weathered marital difficulties previously in what I call “my former life,” but it was in something I will never forget.

I worked for a small family-run business. It reminded me of the Ewing family from the old Dallas series. The patriarch had passed away, leaving the matriarch to preside over her three squabbling sons who consistently jockeyed for priority, attention, and authority within the business. Only three of us in the office were not related to the family: the accountant, the receptionist, and me. At least that was the situation at the beginning of this story.

The receptionist was a gorgeous red-haired young woman. I’ll call her Diana (names have been changed to protect the innocent). She was a living doll, but unfortunately not one of the brightest bulbs in the box, as some people say. I quietly marveled each day that she managed to accomplish the simplest tasks. Nevertheless, she was beautiful! That beauty caught the eye of most men who came to the office, but particularly one of the grandsons, heretofore referred to us Rob. He immediately began pursuit. 

It didn’t take much to woo her. He was rich. She was not. She dazzled with her beauty, he dazzled with his wealth. It wasn’t long until they were married. Unlike most newlyweds of the era, they were immediately able to move into a big farmhouse purchased by the family for the freshly-minted couple.

Over lunch on the first day of Diana’s return to work after the honeymoon, she shared with me that the evening before she had prepared everything for Rob’s morning. She pressed his shirt, set out his shoes with appropriately coordinating socks tucked into them, and laid out his wardrobe for the day. She was up at dawn, dressed, and put on full make-up and hair for herself. In his bathroom, she set his toiletries out, conveniently arranged for his convenience, including the dispensing of the appropriate dollop of toothpaste on his toothbrush (lest he have to do it for himself). Then she went downstairs and prepared a massive breakfast for him.

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It was a football Sunday and my father sat in his recliner watching television most of the day. I was quietly knitting away in the same room. Several times I watched him stretch out his left arm, and rub his bicep and shoulder. I asked him if he hurt his shoulder, and he replied he didn’t know what happened to it, but he had pain going up his arm. His feet were propped up, but he put the foot rest down, and calmly stated he felt a little short of breath. 

Alarmed, I extracted Mom from the kitchen. She was a nurse, so she immediately started the “I think you’re having a heart attack” talk. Dad pooh-poohed her, and said it was only indigestion. She was like a bulldog, not letting go of her grip on the subject. He finally relented, and we bundled him off to the hospital. Within minutes of arrival, he had a massive heart attack. The doctor told us that if we had been at home when it struck, he would have died before we could pick up the phone. My dad survived that, and several other heart events before finally succumbing to death via heart attack. He was 58 when the first one happened, 62 when the last one killed him.

Dad was predisposed to begin with. His own birth father died at the age of 48. My father was gone at 62. Clearly, we have a history of heart disease in our family. 

I have a 30% blockage myself, of which my doctor reminds me each time I go in for a checkup. I have an aversion to taking my cholesterol medicine, and he uses my blockage to remind me how important it is to take the medicine. I’ve had a few scares and stress tests multiple times, and heart caths several times.  He pointed out last time I was in that President Bill Clinton passed a stress test the week before his heart attack.