Sweet story for Thursday Thoughts. Driving Mrs. Dub. a.k.a. the Mother-in-Law Chronicles.
It’s been a while since I had to take my mother-in-law to one of her appointments. Whenever we go, she chatters incessantly. On our last trip, she talked about her parents, who would both be over 100 years old if they were still alive. Out of the blue. She brought them up. I steered the convo by telling her about a prompt I participate in. I asked her a question from a recent one of Melanie’s Share Your World posts: Is there such a thing as a good death? Without missing a beat mother’s was a good death, dad’s was not.
And of course I remember both deaths. B and I hadn’t even been married a year when we lost his grandpa. His grandma was alive to see the birth of both of our kids. And she was a wonderful great G-Ma. Very stubborn and opinionated just like her daughter but there’s nothing wrong with that I finally realize in my advanced years. We should have let them have their opinions, doesn’t mean we’d have to jump to when they said what for. The relationships would have been much easier not to resist. Let ’em tell us what to do, then promptly ignore it. They’d never have known.
Okay, time for the sweet story. Which will eventually tie back to the question we discussed. She talked about Mr. Balfour, the local florist, who she just absolutely loved!! He and his wife were the most kind, gentle people. One night Mr. Balfour went to bed. Then the next morning, he just didn’t wake up. That’s the example of a good death, she said. No suffering. I’ve seen too much suffering. Could never have imagined.
She went on to tell the story about how when she and PoPo were dating, they’d visit the Balfour farm with all the flowers and vegetables to get cucumbers or something. There was a drive through delivery where he or his wife would come out to the car. Mr. Balfour would always tease them joking saying, now you two remember, leave enough room for the breeze to blow through. PoPo’s car had a bench seat where she always had to sit right next to him. Get it? she asked me because PoPo’s car didn’t have a console like this one.
Well I got it and much more. She had a life before us once. That in her almost 80 years, she has witnessed quite a bit. Sobering and sentimental. Maybe bittersweet for this story is more apt than sweet. But still a story and I’ve got a boatload of them. We all do.
As always, more to come.
J-Dub's Grin and Bear It 