The Passing of a Lioness

Please pardon a personal reflection; this past week, my mother-in-law passed away at the age of 101­.

She was a Grand Dame in every sense of the word.  She had a flair – an arresting presence at evening gatherings, fine gown, hair always appointed — but was equally at home canning, cleaning house, and in jeans tending her peony garden.  Throughout their 36 years of marriage, she remained a mistress as well as wife to my father-in-law.  I know that she considered their greatest legacy to be the five outstanding individuals they raised. 

She was tough.  She never complained.  She overcame the shock of my father-in-law’s passing (he left us way too soon), as well as a later bout with a disease that frequently kills.  It is my belief that she lasted as long as she did because in addition to fairly favorable genes, she always looked forward, never back.  She focused on the positive.  Concentrating on the next thing, no matter what challenge might be confronting her, sustained her.  Even as she passed 100, she told TLOML, “I have more to do.”

She was savvy, and could be straightforward in her judgements.  Although ethnically German, she frequently reminded me of her sprinkle of Irish blood.  Since I’m Irish, I found her manner delightful … except when she directed her spleen at me.  😉

In recent years, she could neither see nor hear well, and had become somewhat less steady on her feet, but she eschewed a walker (it wasn’t her).  When she was merely in her mid-90s and TLOML and I had already retired, we came to her apartment so that the ladies could go to one of her medical appointments.  I mentioned that I was a little tired, and might rest on her couch while they were gone.  Her reply:  “Oh, dear — use my bed.  And if you’re hungry, have whatever you want – you know where everything is.”  If only for a moment, I felt the many-decades-past reassurance of having a parent take over.

On a subsequent occasion, a number of family members came by to visit her, and it happened that I was the last through her door.  She looked up, and asked me with a smile, “How long have I known you?”  I knew that at that moment, she wasn’t seeing me as I now appear – Medicare-aged, grayed, seamed — but as I looked when I first appeared at her front door at 18, only months removed from high school graduation, with the temerity to have asked her daughter out on a date.  I did a quick calculation.  “Over 51 years, Ma,” I answered.  “That’s a long time,” she said with a wider smile.

At a particularly raucous out-of-town gathering of her clan about 20 years ago, a hotel employee appeared and indicated that there had been complaints about the noise, and stated that if we didn’t quiet down, we risked being asked to leave the establishment.  When told what the employee had said, she grinned, “We’ve been thrown out of better places than this.”

Never again.  She’s now resting in the best of all places – and that place is all the more charmed by her presence.