R.I.P.

Last month, on  hot and humid New York day, not far from her birthplace and home for most of her one hundred and five years, my husband and sister, along with family members in face masks, buried, literally, their matriarch. Into the grave which already was home to a daughter and a husband. Under a mercifully-placed shade tree.  The graveside service followed two hours of a somewhat traditional wake. An open casket. An assembly of far less than would have been expected had we not still been in the throws of a pandemic that won't quit.  The second pandemic experienced during the lifetime of my newly-deceased mother-in-law.

Her death did not come as a surprise. Rather, the end of a gentle roll. My husband who spoke to her every day for the past twenty-plus years, admitted to himself, at least, that she "left" us months and months ago. Her mind was blissfully elsewhere.  Her body, free from chronicity, just wouldn't allow her to travel back to meet up with the pre-deceased but I have a feeling that there were conferences and plans for a summit were in the waiting.  If anything, my husband and his family have been known for taking a long hard look at things before making decisions.  She, especially, was known to have scanned every weekly food store flyer before making her shopping list.  Never having driven, she probably had little notion of how much patience she extracted from first, her husband, and later, her children, as they transported her from store to store.  Gas and mileage were never factored into the "savings" that she would realize and triumph over. A "sale" was a "sale" and good value meant the world to a woman who grew up during the Great Depression, remembering each and every challenge as if it had happened the day before yesterday. A stockpile of coffee in her basement meant the equivalent of a gold mine. Pandemic after pandemic, this was a woman who would not have run out of toilet paper. 

There are stories.  There will be a million more.  You cannot possibly live one hundred and five years without amassing a tome.  Her home, the one in which she lived until her final moments, is filled to the rafters with stuff of life.  A child of the depression, she never forgot the angst of not having, and she had all that she needed, and then some, in her married life.  Reluctant to part with things in which she saw value, comfort or beauty, my mother-in-law left closets filled with clothing and a house filled with dishes, bric-a-brac and furnishings.  The next few months will become an emotional roller coaster as her family pulls that long history apart, dish by dish, figurine by figurine, dress by dress.  I recall having done that with my own parent's house and one day, when my father, the last of our living parents, passes from this life, his possessions will hardly fill a small box.  I don't know which scenario is sadder. 

My husband and I have now realigned ourselves in the family order.  We are the "elders", the generation that we replaced.  Our children and grandchildren will be looking at us with new eyes, a new perspective. We'll be weighed and measured, spotted and checked on in ways to which we are not accustomed. Yet.