Mother in law

Having to say goodbye to my mother in law made me start thinking about how little I knew of her, how little we had ever chatted I never knew that she got married in a magistrates court and not in church, it was during the war, and my father in law did not want to wait until he got shore leave again, because it could have been months, and I am sure that with her families influence he was afraid that she would be influenced into changing her mind. My father in law I am sure was not the kind of husband that her parents were looking for, for their daughter, but as my youngest daughter pointed out if they had not got married, then she would never have born…………………………
She was always someone who stayed in the back ground, who never voiced her opinion, who never asked to go anywhere, who never shared her dreams and her desires, who I think had a very hard life, as the “sailor’ she married was the boss, what he said, when he said it and how he said it, was just accepted…………….
But thinking back there were happy times, there were times when we were able to bring her out of herself and have a good laugh with her, normally about something she had done.
Like the time we used to stable our horse on the farm where they stayed, and one day my daughter was standing there, holding her horse and “Granny” came out and asked
Where is the horse, i can remember the disbelief on my daughters face, i mean how much bigger did the horse have to be for her to see it??
Like the time when we went to visit, and no one was supposed to have had lunch, all the ladies had tea and cake , and all the men had liver and onions, but everyone was
Trying to pretend they had not, and she said to “Grandpa” have you Eeeten, and he could not admit it, and again she said have you Eeeten……….. and when he came clean and admitted it, is was a case of have you Eeeten, have you Eeeten and it turned out everyone except her had Eeeten.
Like the time, when my daughter laughed at everything she said, and then “Granny’
Laughed, and then my daughter laughed and they ended up rolling on the carpet, no one actually knowing what they were laughing at or why the were in fact laughing….
Like the time my eldest daughter stayed there in the school holidays and they had what she called “button soup” as there was nothing in it, and it was the best nothing soup she had ever tasted.
Like the family lunches we had when the kids were growing up, the food was alway great, she was a great chef, we all just stayed away from the soup, because we had seen what "Grandpa" put into it......... i remember the tomato with the worm in................... not joking............ talk about extra protein ................
I think her daughter summed her up well in the farewell letter she wrote for the funeral, she was the gentlest, kindest person, she had ever know, she would miss those days where they laughed about absolutely nothing, she had never spoken ill of, or hurt anyone how many of us can say that is true of us ...........................