GUIDEPOSTS (^) | August 2019 41
I
walked into my mother-in-
law’s house, as always, without
knocking. My father-in-law, Larry,
had died months earlier, but part of me
still expected to find him in his recliner
in the living room, watching The Wal-
tons on TV. “Hello,” I called out.
“I didn’t hear you come in,” Judy
said, coming down the hallway from
her bedroom. Not her real bedroom.
Just the spare room she’d been sleep-
ing in since Larry’s passing.
Larry and Judy had been married
for 51 years. They’d had nine children;
seven were still living. My husband,
Eric, and I lived about a quarter mile
away, so it was easy to pop in. But the
past two years, ever since Larry had
had several strokes, either Eric or I had
been with Judy nearly constantly, help-
ing with caregiving. His siblings had
pitched in too. But with Larry gone—
and despite my best intentions—it
was sometimes days between visits.
I glanced at the kitchen table, where
Judy’s Bible sat opened to a favorite
verse. Next to it was a box of photos Eric
had brought up from the basement the
night Larry died. We’d looked through
them as a family, choosing some to dis-
play at the funeral. Eric and I had both
offered to take the box back to the base-
ment, but Judy always shook her head.
She was only 73. I thought she would
be okay on her own. Her quiet, can-do
attitude had seen her through a lot over
the years. I was sure she’d welcome the
chance to get out of the house again
whenever she wanted, to see friends or
join a group at the senior center. But
Judy hadn’t done any of that. It was
as if she’d lost her joy in life, her grief
compounded by loneliness. It broke my
heart to see her like this.
“There are seven siblings and seven
days in a week,” I told Eric that eve-
ning. He’s an engineer, so I knew he’d
appreciate having a system. “Each sib-
ling will take a day to call your mom
My widowed mother-in-law lived right down the road.
Sometimes it seemed much farther
Connected
BY DIANE STARK, Brazil, IndianaIN THE LOOP Diane and her mother-in-law,
Judy, bond in real life and by text.LIVING LONGER, LIVING BETTER