Tribute to a Former Mother-in-Law

Estred with my infant daughter

The funeral is today.

I am sad but not grieved.  I feel more nostalgic for the passing of an era in my life.  She lived long enough to see the passing of both her parents, her sister, her husband, her brother-in law, sister-in-law and her youngest son.  She also lived long enough to see the birth of four grandchildren and to be able to attend the marriage of my daughter two years ago. She did not live long enough to see the birth of her first great-grandson.  My daughter will bring a son into this world come March.  Cue the Circle of Life music.

This woman taught me many things.  She was the one that taught me to cook, vegetable garden, preserve food and in many ways what a family should look like.  We all lived on the coast in the Northwest of California, each weekend the collective family would head to the cabin inland.  They had a small orchard and a huge vegetable garden.  Grandma, aunt, uncle, in-laws, and my husband and I would convene here.  They were Swedish stock and we broke for coffee morning and afternoon.  We had lunch and cocktails before dinner.  We spent hours on the deck shelling peas from the garden and preserving and freezing in the hot kitchen.  In August we stood under the cover of the carport and packed crate after crate of peaches the men would bring to us from the orchard.  They sold the good peaches, we canned the culls.

The cabin is now gone as is the last member of that time and place.  All things change but a large part of me is nostalgic for that time in the garden, at the tables of the packing shed and on the deck with the women of the family shelling peas and gossiping.

She will always have a special place in my heart.