Miss You, Mom

There was no love lost between my mother and my father-in-law. My theory is that they were kindred spirits of self loathing in search of any opportunity to dislodge each other's shoulder chips. Pretty much from the moment they laid eyes on each other. When family members gathered at my home it was wise to keep them at opposite ends of the room. Or dinner table. The less interaction between them, the better.  Sometimes they would manage to be civil to one another, but mostly, particularly if an alcoholic beverage or two were involved, a knock-down drag-out would ensue. Though there was never actually a punch thrown or received, the words would fly with vitriol and vehemence. It got to be one of those things that was amusing. I believe it was one of the brothers-in-law who dryly predicted that as my husband and I aged, I would eventually become just like my mother and he would evolve into his father. And we would kill each other. Ensuring our children more estate to inherit as well as relieving them of making any difficult end of life decisions on our behalf. I laughed along louder than anyone because deep down inside I could already feel a little of that nascent contempt. Maybe if I laughed gleefully enough I could make it go away. That feeling of my perfect from the outside marriage crumbling away within. Which brings us to today, the second anniversary of my mother's death. It still doesn't seem quite real. She was so much larger than life in so many ways I thought she would find a way to outrun death. But no. Tomorrow is Reid's twentieth birthday, a day of joy and celebration oddly sandwiched in between the day of his maternal grandmother's death two years ago and the death of his paternal grandfather fifteen years ago. Their respective last days on Earth like bookends around Reid's first. There is a symmetry to this that I can appreciate, that somehow even in death they need someone to keep them apart to avert disaster. And who better than a grandchild who is so unlike them in spirit. He is the joyful, goofy, bright bit of matter that separates his anti-matter grandparents. Proof that love diffuses any difficult situation, if only long enough to blow out the birthday candles.