In remembrance of my mother-in-law

There’s a well-worn cliché, and lots of old-time comedy bits, that men and their mothers-in-law don’t get along.

I never experienced that cliché myself.

My life has been richly blessed by the influence of my mother-in-law, Ruth Norris Jamerson. She died this week at the age of 87, after suffering from far too long with vascular dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease.

I first met Ruth, and the people who would become my in-laws, on Thanksgiving Day in 1994, I think.

No pressure meeting your daughter, Sarah’s, boyfriend on a major holiday.

Because I am, er was, a Yankee from the city (Racine, Wis., current population 76,462) Ruth must have thought I was highfalutin. She cleaned her house as if Pope John Paul II were coming to town, and she was a Southern Baptist woman.

She did like “Ave Maria” and almost got that song included in our wedding, but I digress.

Her house was spotless that day. In fairness, it always was when she was healthy.

We walked in, I met everyone and, as happens in many a home, we gravitated toward the kitchen. I propped my elbow on top of the refrigerator, which was about as tall as I was. As I did so her eyes practically bulged out of their sockets.

The one surface in the entirety of her house that did not get wiped down was the top of that refrigerator.

She was mortified.

I laughed.

I was the only person tall enough to see what was up there and I didn’t care.

I even wiped the top of the refrigerator off after that, thus ending any designs that I was in any way some pompous Yankee arsehole.

Thank goodness.

Ruth, and my father-in-law, Reece, were great travel partners — most of the time.

Agreeable to anything, which often meant that Sarah and I played activities director on our travels to Glacier National Park, Beaufort, S.C., the Outer Banks, or St. Simons Island.

We had great times on the road.

Especially if there was a Christmas Shoppe to browse.

Ruth loved Christmas. It is no exaggeration to say she thought about it all year. When she and Reece traveled the country, which they did with great gusto after he retired, Ruth inevitably came home with a fresh color scheme for her Christmas tree, new linens for the holiday table, or a new floral centerpiece.

She also came home with gifts from the road for everyone, including her grown children, their spouses, the grandchildren, and assorted friends.

For several years, the entire clan and assorted outlaws, my mother among them, traveled to the Outer Banks of North Carolina where we rented a house for a week. The assorted families took turns cooking, or we dined out. And always, Ruth bought gifts for everyone. A show of appreciation and love.

She also loved people through food.

Ruth was an amazing cook.

She’s the only person who could bake a pumpkin pie that is, as they say in the South, any count. That means it was good.

Actually, most all of her desserts were untouchable by others. Even the simplest dishes like chocolate lush, eclair cake or Paula Deen’s three-day coconut cake.

More than just ingredients went into her food.

Ruth loved her family, her friends and her church. And she loved to create an occasion for any and all of the above.

Shortly before I met the Jamerson family, Reece and Ruth built a sunroom on the back of the old farmhouse that had been in the family forever.

That room was party central for Ruth. Sunday School class parties, choir parties, birthday parties, holiday parties — if there was a reason to gather, she gathered people on that porch.

Those events brought her a great deal of joy.

So did a Starbucks caramel latte. Put one of those in her hands and she was in a pretty happy place. And I loved to be the one to hand her the latte to see the smile on her face.

We didn’t always agree, but our disagreements were about little things, like blinds vs. drapes or the color of something.

Still, if a choice had to be made between, say, one color throw pillow over another, and I was the deciding vote between Ruth and Sarah, or Ruth and Reece, it was usually Ruth with whom I agreed.

There was one moment where things almost went pear-shaped.

My in-laws knew I was submitting to a colonoscopy on March 27, 2012. After we learned I had cancer, Sarah called her parents.

My mother-in-law let out a heavy sigh.

”We were afraid of that,” she said. Which meant she was afraid of that.

Ruth truly was a joyful person, but she was also a worry wart.

No one, least of all my gastroenterologist, expected I would be diagnosed with cancer. Sarah took her mom to task for the negative comment with the promise that if her parents couldn’t get on board the positivity train that we wouldn’t see them again until treatment was over.

They were among our biggest supporters during treatment.

When they came to the hospital to sit with me so Sarah could go home to nap and shower, Ruth quietly read a book while Reece listened to either bird calls or sermons on his iPod.

I learned this week that Reece and Ruth married in 1962. They were introduced by church friends. The story goes that Reece was walking by a room where Ruth was singing.

He heard the voice of an angel. Cue the Hallmark Christian romance movie!

The last seven years were difficult for Ruth after Reece died. The joy of life was still there but it was dimmed by dementia, which got progressively worse.

Then, on the Saturday before Christmas 2022, when my sister-in-law was escorting Ruth to a walk-in clinic. Ruth fell and broke her femur.

A cascade of events sped up the dementia, including hospital delirium and other perils of the human body aging out before the spirit does.

Ruth spent much of the last two years of her life in a nursing home, bed bound by a body that betrayed her.

Her short-term memory disappeared.

She forgot someone stopped by for a visit moments after they left.

Conversations were repeated over and over and over.

Most painful for us was Ruth’s awareness that her memory was faulty.

She wanted to go home but was incapable of caring for herself.

Sarah, her brothers Mark and Russell, sister-in-law Holly, our niece Leah and her mom, our sister-in-love, Cheri, formed her caregiving team, along with the great staff at Abundant Christian Living Community.

I witnessed Sarah caring for her mom on many occasions.

The patience with which Sarah held Ruth’s hand while repeatedly answering the question, “when can I go home?”

Combing Ruth’s hair.

Brushing her teeth.

Feeding her.

Singing to her.

Starbucks still brought her joy in the nursing home.

So did feeding Marley dog treats, and seeing the faces of people she loved on a regular basis.

Eventually, dementia robbed Ruth of the security of knowing where she was. She was constantly afraid that her family didn’t know her whereabouts and she feared the facility was going to kick her out onto the street.

Signs stating where she was and that her children knew she was there, along with pictures of all us visiting her in her room, helped.

Until they didn’t.

She stopped trusting the signs.

Slowly and inevitably the dementia stole her away.

Sarah said she lived for the moments when she would see Ruth smile.

A flicker of joy.

No matter how brief.

Still there.

Still Ruth.

Now she is with God.

And Reece.

Unafraid.

Clear of mind.

I imagine when she opened her eyes on the other side of the veil that she gasped and then smiled.

Joy filling her heavenly being.

Just as it was on earth.