On the weekend before my last two workdays of the school year, Michael's dad called to say that Michael's mom had passed away. She had been in poor health for the past several years and had been living in a nursing home. When we visited at Christmas, she was a frail shell of a woman, and it was hard to tell if she knew who we were. For years, we'd been saying that she might not live much longer, and yet when the call finally came, it felt unexpected.
Michael and the boys left immediately to attend the funeral in Tennessee, but since I was having trouble getting in touch with my boss, I went into work Monday morning, planning to catch a flight out that night. I left work a little after noon, went home to pack my bag, checked my plane ticket...and realized that Michael had bought a ticket for the wrong date. Luckily, I was able to book a same-day flight (for significantly more money), and in hindsight, I probably shouldn't have asked Michael to purchase my plane ticket, considering that he'd just lost his mom and wasn't in the best state of mind.
I'm hoping Michael will at some point write something about his mom and what she meant to him. For me, though, Sylvia's funeral was tough and strange because she was so young - about the same age as my own parents - and because she'd been in such poor health for the past several years. Except for the first two years of our marriage, we haven't lived near Michael's family, and I think just because of the way Michael is, the way his parents are, and the way I am, we haven't spent much time with them over the years - only a day or two in July and again at Christmas. Although I am extremely grateful to Michael's parents for the son they raised, I have never been close to them, and the fact that Sylvia's health declined so much in the end made it even harder to really know her.
I kept thinking at the funeral about an interview we did with Michael's mom a few years ago to add to our family history record. One question we asked was why she decided to join the Church. She was in college when she met Michael's dad and decided to be baptized. Because of that decision, her parents disowned her, and for most of his childhood, Michael didn't interact with his maternal grandparents. But Sylvia said that despite the way her parents felt, she loved the gospel teaching that families can be together forever, so she knew she wanted to join the Church.
Michael's parents married young, had five kids in six or seven years, and never had a lot of money. At the funeral, Michael's sister Diana had displayed photographs of Sylvia as a child and teenager, and looking at the photos, I kept thinking about how pretty she'd been and how much potential she'd had in life and how, despite that potential, her biggest accomplishment had been raising five crazy kids to be stable adults and then how she'd died so young.
"Was she happy?" I asked Michael on the way home.
"I think she was," he said. "I think that being involved in our stuff when we were kids and then watching us live our lives as adults, that made her happy."
I know there are some people that don't find satisfaction simply being a parent, but I also know that for me personally, the best job I ever had was staying home with my kids. As hard as it could be at times, I loved every second of it.
I don't know what dreams Sylvia had that she may have had to set aside to raise her family, but I know that she raised some amazing human beings, one of whom is the father of my amazing human beings. And I hope that made her happy.
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