I have vivid memories of my mother-in-law because as the writer and poet, Anne Sexton, once said, “Pain engraves a deeper memory.”

My mother-in-law is on hospice in a hospital in Virginia and I wish I could go to her. I’d like to say goodbye. The last time we talked my mother-in-law said, “You need to call me more often! I need you to take care of me!” Then she sobbed and wailed and I put my head in my hands and prayed for her as she cried. I told her I loved her, and that I would try to call more, and then I prayed more.

If there is anything that accurately describes my relationship with my mother-in-law it would be: I prayed more. 

My mother-in-law put me on my knees and has kept me there for nearly thirty years. I don’t hold this against her. She’s done me a huge favor. Part of my salvation story is tied to my mother-in-law. She lived with us and was driving me stark raving mad when I was saved fifteen years ago.

Scott was a military pilot back then, and hardly ever home, but Big Mama was home. I called her Big Mama after she named me Little Mama. Big Mama was in my kitchen with flour and grease and beans flying everywhere, while her Spanish soap operas blared on our television in the living room, and I was coming undone.

Sometimes an undone person can undo you. My mother-in-law was mostly undone. She had seasons of sanity, but her seasons of insanity lasted much longer. Before she lost custody of her children when Scott was nine-years-old, she’d been diagnosed bipolar. Later in life, schizophrenia and more extreme mental illnesses would define her.

Personally, I think Big Mama battled demons, but I grew to love her anyway. I’m not blithely putting horns and a pitchfork on her problems. The spiritual battle was there and it was very real and disturbing.

Learning to separate Big Mama from her bad behavior helped me tremendously. When Big Mama took my bathroom trash can and dropped the dirty can into my sink full of dishes as I was washing them one day, I knew Big Mama was sick. She was an incredibly sloppy person, but couldn’t stand dirty bathroom trash cans. I didn’t know how to handle her. Loving Big Mama was one of the hardest things I’ve done in my life.

Now saying goodbye to her is tearing me up. We didn’t have the relationship I dreamed of having with my mother-in-law when I married all those years ago, but what we had was hard-earned and precious to me.

The truth is you will have difficult relationships in your life. You will have pain and sorrow in your life caused by other people. You will have trials and tribulations in your life because of other people. What will you do with that? Will you let it make you old and sour, or will you make it something new and sweet?

I remember standing in my yard one day screaming at my husband that his mother was a crazy #$%@*! Anyone passing by would have thought I was the crazy @#$%&. After that day, I realized I could let the trouble with my mother-in-law destroy my marriage, or I could change.

My mother-in-law has never changed. She’s been the same for the three decades I’ve known her. When my mother-in-law lived with us, I began going to church every day. Daily mass became my refuge. Luke was a toddler at the time, and I took him along. Every morning Luke dressed like a little cowboy and strapped himself onto the knee rest at my feet pretending he was riding a bull for eight seconds in a Catholic Church full of quiet, old people.

I was bull riding too. Trying to conquer a beast in my world. That wild animal of pain and anger and insanity in my home. In my heart. I was very close to hating my mother-in-law. And hating myself. I thought I was a nice person until she moved in with us. Nobody has ever brought out in me what my mother-in-law brought out.

Beautiful and terrible things.

By the time my mother-in-law moved on, I was a born again believer. I remember her saying to me with eyes as wide as Texas where she came from, “You’ve changed. You have found Jesus. You are so beautiful now. It frightens me.” Then she packed her bags and went to another state.

Big Mama and I then became phone buddies. Speaking at least once a week, sometimes several times a week for years. She often would say, “Thank you, Little Mama, for loving me. I know I’m hard to love.”

Tears clog my throat as I write this today. My mother-in-law was hard to love, but she was so worth loving. I will miss her.