Since then, my feelings have been difficult to pin down and articulate. I’ve felt shock; guilt; frustration; sorrow; hopelessness; love and a seemingly endless jumble of other feelings too. I felt shock because even though I had time to prepare, nothing could ever quite prepare me for the finality of her loss. I entered into her life long after she had started drinking and a small part of me naively thought it would always be that way. I’ve felt guilt, because I didn’t think to question the status quo too strongly and because I didn’t reach out to her. Even knowing it wasn’t my choice to make and that many before me had tried already, the guilt of never trying has been unbearable at times. I’ve felt frustration. My mother-in-law was a wonderful woman and I would have loved for her to have seen her grandchildren grow up, I would have given anything for her to have watched me marry her son a few weeks ago. I have been frustrated about all of the things that could and should have been.
I have felt the sorrow more intensely than anything else. Her impact upon my life has been profound and I am grief stricken whenever I am reminded of her. I am filled with regret that I didn’t tell her just how much I appreciated her when she was here. I have felt hopeless. I have pondered this world and the sensitive nature of my mother-in-law and I have come to understand that this world is just too cold, too brutal and too painful for some people to bear. And though I have long since realised that this tends to be the very best of people, losing one so close because it was all just too much has left me despairing about the chaos and destruction of modern living. And in the midst of it all I have felt love. Love for the woman who brought the love of my life into the world and raised him to be the person that he is today; Love for the woman who spent hours chatting about gentle parenting, extended breastfeeding and co-sleeping with me; Love for the woman who was endlessly kind and generous. I will love and miss her every day.
I am “just” her daughter-in-law. She was a part of my life for 6 short years and my own grief is a splash in the ocean of her children, her life-long best friend, her sister and many who had known and loved her long before I had even been born.
If I could take anything away from my time with her, if I could better myself in any way for knowing and losing her it would be about reaching out to people, being real and appreciating the best in people. I spent too long just coasting, accepting that it was nothing to do with me and focussing on my husband’s emotional journey. I don’t regret that so much, but I do regret the time lost and the things that went unsaid. We can never know how much time we have here and too much of it is wasted in not saying the things that we should. Before we know it, it’s already too late.
There’s always a positive lesson to take away from anything sad in life. But, wouldn’t it be nice if we didn’t have to go through the pain of loss to fully appreciate them?
