What is Death?
Death is nothing at all.
I have only slipped away into the next room.
I am I and you are you.
Whatever we were to each other,
that we still are.Call me by my old familiar name.
Speak to me in the easy way
which you always used.
Put no difference in your tone.
Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.Laugh as we always laughed
at the little jokes we enjoyed together.
Play, smile, think of me, pray for me.
Let my name be ever the household word
that it always was.
Let it be spoken without affect,
without the trace of a shadow on it.Life means all that it ever meant.
It is the same that it ever was.
There is absolutely unbroken continuity.
Why should I be out of mind
because I am out of sight?I am waiting for you,
for an interval,
somewhere very near,
just around the corner.All is well.
~ Henry Scott Holland
What a horrible and busy week the past one was… It was a good thing that I had scheduled all those posts to publish when I did…
My Mother-in-law is gone, passed away, although not unexpectedly at age 58. (Not my current husband’s mother, but my first husband’s mother. My son’s grandma.).
She was more than a mother-in-law to me, even after I divorced her son. She was a wonderful woman, who rarely, if ever had anything bad to say to, or about anyone. In high school, she was my idol, I wanted to be just like her.
My family is full of women who depend totally on their men, M. Jane (my former mother in law) wasn’t like that at all. She could take care of herself and anyone else that came along. She not only took care of the house, her grown kids, and her grand kids, she worked full time running her own business, and always looked amazing.
My father was nearly soft tab cialis blown away the first time he met her, she was that HOT, of course it could have been something to do with the fact that she showed up on a motorcycle, in a slinky little dress, with her long blond hair flying, yet when she pealed off her helmet, not a hair seemed out of place.
She used to amaze me when the kids were little, she could spend all day babysitting four children under the age of six, yet there was never anything out of place in her house. The kids were sparkling clean,and content, and she’d leave for work the second we’d pick up the kids, and then she’d work most of the night at her bar. Yet she always was up at 6:30am to have breakfast ready for her husband when he got home from working the night shift in the coal mines.
Her only downfall was her business, working at a bar, she was a drinker. She was the first person to get me ‘legally’ drunk, I remember the first night I was able to go out after I turned 21, she was pouring white Russians, and she drank me under the table within an hour, literally, as I fell off the bar stool and spilled my drink all over myself. I also puked a half dozen times on the ride home. But I learned real quick that although white Russians don’t taste like alcohol, they are way too potent for me, I never drank more than one at a time after that.
Four years ago M. Jane was diagnosed with cirrhosis, and has been battling it as best she could. Saturday night at 12:38am (Sunday morning, I guess I should say) she succumbed to the pharmacies online disease that she had fought valiantly. Even then though, she still amazed everyone by being alert and coherent right to the end, and surviving for more than an hour and a half after the life support system was pulled, by her choice. Yep, she ran the show right up until the end.
She said just before she passed that her only regrets were that she wouldn’t be around to meet her great-grandchild who’s due at the beginning of December, and that it would probably kill her mother, who is still alive at age 92, but not doing good, and living in a nursing home.
She will be greatly missed by hundreds of people, myself included, but she’ll live on in our hearts, in the hearts of her husband, two children, four grand kids, and all those of us who knew her.
Rest in Peace M. Jane! We love you!
