My mother-in-law passed away last night. She would have been 82 in July. She was diagnosed with Alzheimers in 2008 and had been in a nursing facility in Pennsylvania near her sister's home since early 2009. About a month ago when I spoke with her, she told me that she had a new boyfriend named Jack. She sounded like a guilty teenager. Who know what those little old people get up to after the lights go out... Anyhow, they had taken her to the hospital on Saturday because she was complaining of stomach and back pain. Tim talked to her about 8:30 Sunday night and they called him around midnight to tell him that she had died. Shirley, the oldest of three sisters, was born in Pennsylvania and lived there until she retired to Florida in the early 1980s with her husband, Al (Tim's stepdad). Pop was a gem. When Shirley was young, she and her sister had a local radio show called Shirley and Curly; they sang "country-western" music, she called it. She and her first husband had a son named Harry. When Harry was ten or so, they adopted Tim. Tim said he was terrorized raised mostly by his grandmother. After she and Tim's dad divorced, she married a man named Ronald Whose-Last-Name-I-Can't-Remember and they adopted Tim's sister, Kris. Kris is another story entirely, which I will save for another time. Apparently, Ronald didn't last long and one day Tim finally got his wish: to have Al as a dad. Shirley and Pop had been married over twenty-five years when Pop went to his reward. Shirley was always nice to me; my own mother tried to convince me that there was some unwritten rule about hating your mother-in-law. I mean, Shirley could be weird; she once gave me a farting teddy bear for my birthday. But she was never mean. My own mother had cornered the market on meanness. Shirley also did and said a LOT of funny stuff - some of which I have written about and other things which I have stored away for future writing, like the mind-controlled Roomba and the time she nearly choked to death in the Mexican restaurant. When Tim called to tell me, the first thing he said was, "I guess now she knows that Lucky didn't make it." I had to laugh. Shirley had this cat named Lucky, which Kris had rescued from Death Row at the shelter. When she went to the rehab in 2008 with her broken arm, Lucky came to stay with us and our cats. Well, one day I went home and Lucky was laid out on the kitchen floor. He was alive, but barely. I rushed him to the vet who informed me that this old cat was suffering from kidney and liver failure and there was nothing we could do for him. So I did the humane thing and dispatched Lucky to his heavenly home. But I couldn't tell my mother-in-law. She asked me every day, "How's Lucky?" and I would say that he was just fine. That wasn't really a lie, since Lucky was indeed fine. So for the better part of the last year and half, every time she asked about Lucky, we would say that he was fine.
Tim's right; I guess now she knows.
