Death and Life

My mother-in-law died last week.

Therefore I did not post last week.

We drove twenty hours up to West Virginia on one day and back down to Texas twenty more hours four days later.

It was only half way through the last trip that my mother (who so graciously offered to keep fighting children separated in the fancy rent car), while reading Two Kisses for Maddie, brought up the fact that maybe we'll all get blood clots and die from sitting so long.

I haven't slept much after that.  Neither has my mother as I get up and poke her every couple of hours to make sure she's still alive.  I know she is happy to be going home today.

I am all creepily freaked out about not being there to spend every waking moment with her because, WTH, she could be next.

Just call me Merry Sunshine.

Derick's mother smoked, took psychiatric medications for many years, was overweight, got no exercise whatsoever, sat for long periods of time, and her cholesterol was through the roof.  My mother is the opposite of all of that, but still, I worry for her.  She is almost 69.  All of her siblings passed before 62.   I feel like we're living on borrowed time.

We do not know for certain how my mother-in-law passed.  She was found last Thursday but they list her date of death as last Sunday.   There was no viewing.   Maybe she had a heart attack?  A stroke?  They identified her body by the pins from a previous ankle surgery.   Horrible.

You know I wasn't close to her.  She was so very different than my own family and, although she came to accept me over time, wasn't too crazy about me.  Still.   No one should have to die like that.    Was she alive for a while and couldn't get up or did she die instantly?  Where were those friends who went on and on at the funeral about how they spent every day with her?  Didn't they miss her for four days?  Didn't her daughter find it odd that her phone was off the hook that long?  (She was apparently reaching for the phone).  Did she know what was happening to her?   Sad, sad, sad.

I am thinking of getting my parents the Life Alert system.   That would make a great birthday gift don't you think?

I have all kinds of emotions right now.  Fear for my own mom's life, guilt for not making more of an effort with my MIL,  empathy for my husband is riding his own emotional roller coaster,  grief for my children's loss.

I also feel much relief after ridding my child of the lice he picked up from the hotel easy chair he sat in playing his video games for hours and hours.

Oh yes.   We went to my mother-in-law's funeral and three hours later were dousing ourselves in $100 dollars worth of RID after finding a live LOUSE crawling on my child.

Dog dies = Shingles
Mother-in-law dies = Lice

Let's not have anymore death for a while shall we?