So amidst all the hand-wringing about Trump and Clinton, my father-in-law passed away last night. \u00a0He was 75.<\/p>\n
He\u2019d been in ill-health for quite some time; three years ago, he had heart surgery\u00a0and never fully recovered, but was doing well enough that he and my mother-in-law visited a year ago for my youngest\u2019s first communion, and seemed to be doing okay-ish.<\/p>\n
But three weeks ago, he got\u00a0an infection severe enough that antibiotics had no effect, and the decision was made that a risky repeat heart surgery was needed; the surgery took place on Tuesday and he didn\u2019t survive much past it.<\/p>\n
Was he a particularly brilliant, highly accomplished man? \u00a0Did he leave a great legacy of some kind? \u00a0No, not really \u2013 he was a master carpenter who later took a sales job. \u00a0But he passed on to my husband his carpentry skills, and appreciation of biking and hiking. \u00a0And he\u2019ll be missed by his family, near and far.<\/p>\n
And in the meantime, my own parents are coming to visit, for the first time in three years. \u00a0They live in the Detroit area, so it\u2019s about a five hour drive, and after Dad\u2019s hospitalizations and rehab stays and strict instructions from the doctor not to drive, Mom has been nervous about doing all the driving herself, and yet unwilling to actually make the change to flying here, but she finally decided to use the occasion of my youngest\u2019s birthday coming up on Monday to make the trip \u2014 and the plan is for her to drive only as far as Michigan City, taking as many stops as they need, and then my husband, who needed to spend the day at his employer\u2019s office in Chicago tomorrow anyway, will take the South Shore line out that way, meet them, and do the rest of the driving. \u00a0So we\u2019ll see how that goes.<\/p>\n
Growing up, it was natural to us that grandparents were seen only rarely, given that one set lived 10 hours away by car, so we\u2019d see them in the summer on our vacation, and the other set lived even further away; we only drove out there three times, growing up, plus their occasional visits to us. \u00a0(And for our family of five to drive was\u00a0out of the question, though the grandparents did fly to us.) \u00a0Now, so many of the people in our community have parents and extended family nearby: \u00a0sometimes in the metro area, other times even in the same town or neighborhood \u2014 one of our neighbors lives across the street from her mother!<\/p>\n
(Could we have similarly made the choice to stay in the Detroit area? \u00a0Not really \u2013 that\u2019s not where the jobs were; and, besides, in my experiences to that point, no one did so, so it didn\u2019t even occur to us.)<\/p>\n
So my feelings for my father-in-law\u2019s passing are mixed in with thinking about my parents\u2019 impending visit, and not knowing how they\u2019ll do, how the drive will work out, whether they\u2019ll be able to manage anything more than just staying at home, given their own physical limitations. \u00a0And I contemplated scheduling a tour of the retirement community near us, in the hopes that seeing the place in person would entice them (it\u2019s a really nice place!), but, reality is, they\u2019ve rejected the idea of moving too many times \u2014 even though it kills me to watch them live their lives of inactivity, and, with their closest family being my sister, living 45 minutes away and unable to help much, there\u2019s always a feeling of doom, that Something will Go Wrong, that one or the other of them will find themselves incapacitated as quickly as my father-in-law, well \u2014 anyway, the trouble is, we wouldn\u2019t be able to help, and it would become a very difficult situation.<\/p>\n
And beyond that, there\u2019s the sadness of wishing my kids could know\/have known their grandparents better.<\/p>\n
So that\u2019s how my day\u2019s been. \u00a0How was yours?<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
So amidst all the hand-wringing about Trump and Clinton, my father-in-law passed away last night. \u00a0He was 75. He\u2019d been in ill-health for quite some time; three years ago, he had heart surgery\u00a0and never fully recovered, but was doing well enough that he and my mother-in-law visited a year ago for my youngest\u2019s first communion, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[58],"class_list":["post-4462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-family"],"yoast_head":"\n