The first time I met her she towered over me. I looked up at her with nervous anticipation. Her gentle and kind smile calmed the butterflies in my stomach. We sat down for a meal and only silently acknowledged the awkwardness of meeting the boyfriend’s parents for the first time.
I would be privileged to get to know my husband’s Mom but only for two years. I would share many meals with her. Together, we would side eye her Mom as she gathered up the leftover Red Lobster garlic cheese biscuits (you know the ones) and stuff them into a napkin, gingerly placing them in her purse. She would never eat them. I would tell her about recipes I was trying and feeding to her hungry child and bring her bottles of wine for hemming my pants.
Patti was a wonderful seamstress. Her smocking was scrunched perfectly, the scene of a pig amongst a slew of hearts, lovingly sewn into the top of a dress my daughter would wear years later. My daughter has worn many of her beautiful pieces, works of art to me for they are relics of her love and talent.
She loved her kids so earnestly and quietly. I don’t remember Patti needing to take up much space. She was tall and lanky but graceful and lithe. As she turned her body towards me and genuinely asked me how I was doing each time we’d meet, I felt pride and a kind of tenderness. I knew that by choosing my husband to be in my life, I also had the privilege of choosing her. She was warm and kind and the sad truth is that my kids will never feel the goodness and doting only a grandmother like her can give. I still want so badly for her to take up space. She has missed so much.
The call came swiftly with no time to brace myself for what was to come. I drove my husband and I blindly to the hospital.
There is no bracing yourself for the words the doctor says as they step into the waiting room, heads bowed, hands clasped, still donning the gloves and scrubs that only moments ago were working hard and tirelessly to breathe life back into death. How do you brace yourself for a lifetime without someone you only started to adore?
There are no good words to describe those moments as you try and process what is being said. There is blank and numb and empty.
The next few days felt like a blur as I channeled my parent’s energy of helping and serving after a loss. I made sure there was toilet paper, food, and whatever might be needed in these dark hours.
While I don’t think she ever mentioned butterflies to me or that she loved them, for many years now I think she reveals her presence in their form.
As I was pushing and breathing and in pain during the birth of my daughter, in my epidural-infused haze, I saw butterflies flitting and flying around me. They were circling and flapping and offering me a window into the heaven where she exists. They were tiny and purple and perfect, offering me solace during a time that is precarious as you push and push and hope the tiny baby makes it way safely into the world.
Often, on runs in the woods or roads, a butterfly zips past my vision and I think of her. I feel warm and comforted, a brief moment of feeling her presence. A brief rush of grief.
Grief is a complicated thing. In the beginning, you dearly miss the person who has left you. But what follows is anger and disappointment that they too will miss out on life, the births and deaths, birthdays and graduations, and new jobs, and that never again can they offer you the embrace of love and safety only they knew how to give.
I grieve that she will not get to see our kids grow up, and that they have to learn about her secondhand. She will never get to see my husband in his spectacular form finishing incredibly hard races, toeing the line of an ultra trail race again and again. She will never see her sons showing up for her daughter and see them grow close as they age, asking for old recipes she made and delighting about memories of running into the tree in front of their old house or how the youngest was 11 years behind the middle one.
I grieve that I won’t get to experience her as a mother-in-law. To offer me parenting advice and how to cope with my husband’s quirks. After all, she shaped him into the kind and gentle, soft-spoken man he is today. Good grief would she be so damn proud of him.
Grief has so many layers. As soon as we think we are done, the next layer appears, the one we weren’t expecting, the one no one told us about. Grief is so personal and lonely yet we all experience loss many times throughout our lifetime. I wish grief could connect us more.
Anderson Cooper recorded a beautiful podcast series on grief after he lost his mother. If you are ready, I would encourage you to hear the beautiful stories he offers about his own grief and how it can in fact, connect us.
Grief resources if you want to dig deeper:
It’s OK That You’re Not Ok by Megan Devine
A Guide to Support Hurting People
Modern Loss: Candid Conversations about grief. Beginners Welcome.
Thanks for reading along. I hope you will tell your people right now how you love and cherish them. We can’t live our lives as if we will lose our favorite people tomorrow, but we can live our lives by ensuring our people know how we feel about them.
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What a beautiful eulogy and such gorgeous pictures. I’m certain she would be so proud of you as well! ♥️🫂
Thank you for sharing this story Lindsey (and the beautiful pictures of your loved ones!) We lost my father-in-law about 5 years into our marriage. Many of your thoughts resonate with me. We were chatting about Cheryl Strayed earlier…if you haven’t read her short story about the loss of her mother-in-law, it’s really good ❤️