A thank you note...

After attending the funeral of my First Mother-in-Law -- not too awkward, as my First Husband and I seem to be on friendly terms now -- I came home and penned a note to my Second Mother In Law who celebrated her 81st birthday on the day of the funeral.

There's nothing like a funeral to remind you how short life is!

I haven't seen Barbara (MIL 2nd) for a long time, but we do ask after each other through our mutual contact, my son, her grandson. My note was just a one page thank you as I come to recognize how difficult it can be to be a Good Mother in Law -- which Barbara was.

As was Rosemary (MIL 1st). I have seen her a few times over the years, staying in touch through our mutual contact, my first son, her first grandson. I saw her just two summers ago, but she was suffering from the effects of Parkinson's. She didn't recognize me - her face lit up, though, when I explained I was my son's mother. She recognized his name, and a familiar smile spread across her face.

How I wish I had told her before then what a wonderful Mother In Law she was to me - I don't know that it would have mattered as much to her as it would have to me, to have let someone special know what they meant to me. I hope she knew it.

All two of my MIL's have wonderful relationships with their grandchildren - I think that is one aspect of being a good MIL. I'm wondering if it is even possible to be a good MIL without being a good grandmother, and vice versa....

Coincidence or Cause?

I find it ironic that the problems I had with my daughter in law came at the funeral of my former mother in law. Perhaps there's a lesson there.

Don't bring up "issues" at emotionally loaded events -- funerals, weddings, holidays. Of course, that's probably when we want to bring them up. Although I was not aware that I was emotionally fragile at the time, that might have been a delusion! And certainly my son was. And he was the one who took our conversation and ran with it, to his wife who was feeling like an outsider and wasn't aware that I really was the ultimate outsider there - former daughter-in-law a guest in the house of my newly divorced ex-husband and his brother and family.

As my former brother-in-law would say, "What a scene".