Ashes to ashes...

This Sunday will mark two weeks since my mother in law passed away. For those if you who did not know, after a three-week stay in the critical care unit, after three weeks of agonizing pain and suffering while rapidly metastasizing breast cancer filled and re-filled her lungs with fluid, Husband and his sister made some difficult decisions to let nature take its course, and we watched her gradually slip into a calm and peaceful death.

And this is about the hardest thing that I've ever had to write, but since she always loved my writing and always read this blog, I couldn't let any more time pass without acknowledging her and thanking her for her unflagging support, and, as always, for giving birth to my husband.

Yes, we're all exhausted and very sad, and it will take some time to work through our grief, but I want to take a break from that and share a story from a happier time. She always loved our house - in fact, Husband often says that she liked it more than we did - and one thing that we both liked was when she came over and showed me how to cook some of her famous recipes. For years, we'd go to her house, and she would make us all those wonderful dishes that Husband loved so much - chicken soup, lasagne, pot roast. I wanted to make them for him, and I asked her for recipes, and she'd say, "What recipes? I don't write these things down. One day, I'll show you."

So she'd come over. Rolling her eyes at my soup pots that were inadequate ("So we'll make less, but you guys need a bigger pot!" she'd say.), her own spices in tow (even though I had my own). She'd park her pocketbook on the table and get to work. In went the chicken I'd purchased - with her very clear direction on exactly what kind to get ("Fryers, you gotta get fryers."). In went the water, the parsnips (the shopping for which was a comedy of errors that became a scene in one of my novels, as Husband couldn't tell a parsnip from a parsec), the carrots, the dill. Lots and lots of dill.

Then you simply cook until done. Oh, and while it's simmering, you have to skim the fat off the top. I skimmed, while she went out for a smoke.

When I'm up to making soup again, I'll think of her. And now, when I walk into the house and see her pocketbook on the shelf, below the green marble urn that holds her ashes, (yes, after a week of sitting mental shiva for her I was finally able to joke that I was certain she'd be living with us one day) part of me simply thinks she's out for a smoke, and she'll be back in a minute.

She quit smoking years ago, when she was first diagnosed. But I'll still see her bitty body on our deck, leaning up against a railing, letting the ashes fly into the wind.