Too Late...

It has been a terrible week-end. Our family lost one of our number. One of the dearest, sweetest, happiest among us. She had suffered through the throes of breast cancer, with chemo and radiation and all that involved. But she prevailed. She came through and spent the next 15 years raising her two beautiful daughters. Her bright, well-read, high-honors, daughters. Young women who could carry on a conversation without saying "like" every third word. She was an educator herself and along with her husband, my eldest son, she instilled the importance of learning in her two girls. She was a daughter who saw her Father to the end of his life. And her Mother who also passed away, but who carried on longer than she might have had she not had the care of this terrific caregiver. She was a Sister who drove half way across the country when her only sister was in crisis. She loved her brother and his family. She was a Wife who willingly went to work every day and arranged that her husband would stay home and be "Mr Mom" from the infancy of the children. And it worked for them. She was an in-law to an assortment of her husband's brothers and their wives and their many children. She was a daughter-in-law to me. A splendid relationship. She had the Summers with her girls because as a teacher, she had the same school schedule. They read books, and took walks, and went on vacation. When you saw her, you were immediately happy that she was there. She smiled more than anyone I knew. And she meant every one of her smiles. Never fake. She told you what she thought and pulled no punches, but she never did it in a mean way. Last year, illness struck again. I still don't know all the details. Only one person outside of her immediate family knows the timeline. But it was not like before. Not like when she got sick, took her treatments and got better. This time, there was no getting better. From what we've learned, she chose to keep her decline from the rest of us. I knew something was wrong but respecting her privacy, I didn't pry. The rest of the family saw her just after the New Year. For reasons of my own, I didn't attend the gathering. So I missed seeing her. But she knew that was probably her last hurrah because I have had two people tell me that in retrospect, they realize that she was saying "good-bye". On Friday last, I got the call. She was gone. Forever. And I never said, "good-bye".