October has always been one of my favorite months of the year. The colors are beautiful, Thanksgiving and Christmas are coming up so excitement is building, and I get to re-decorate!
But this October has been devastating. Literally on the 1st day of October, my wonderful mother-in-law, Maisie, passed away. Mike and I were in the car, in Mississippi, making a mad dash to Atlanta to see her before she died when we got the word that we were too late. I was driving as Mike tried to come to grips with the idea of a world without his mother.
Maisie was not just a wife and mother, she was a real force! She opened all the doors for me to see the world! When I told her (early in our marriage) that I had always wanted to see England and Scotland she got up, grabbed her keys, took us right to the post office to get our passports. Then she went online and booked our flights! It was an amazing trip and my relationship with my mother-in-law was cemented into friendship and we were friends until she died. I was lucky enough to be able to tell her, during a visit in May, how much she meant to me and how grateful I was that she showed me the world.
There is another reason I am grateful to Mike's family. It is their tradition to take care of parents and grandparents in their own homes. Mike lived with his grandmother to take care of her when he was in his 20's and now our nephew, Andrew, has moved in with Mike's father to take care of him. So when I told Mike we needed to pack up, sell our house, add a room to my mother's house, and move in with her so that we could take care of her...he never batted an eye. It's not every man that would volunteer to do that! My mom has battled cancer twice in the years that we have been living together and Mike has been a nurse, cook, maid, and my rock.
So thank you Maisie, for being such a great mother, grandmother and friend. You raised three remarkable human beings...what an incredible legacy!!
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