It has been just over one month since Dave died and this has been the worst week I have had so far. I feel like every nerve in my body is on fire and I can't concentrate on much of anything. I have my mother in law to thank for this present state of mind. Things between us have never been great and Dave's passing has brought that to a head. Grieving is hard enough but to have to be packing up my life with him at this early stage of the process is almost more than I can bear. How could anyone be so heartless and cruel, especially to someone who is at the most vulnerable point of their life? Especially when you are supposed to be family.
Dave and I were together for 16 years and in that time I have kept my own counsel on the subject of my mother-in-law. I have kept silent as long as I can and I will simply no longer keep my feelings to myself, not after what she has done. I wasn't going to say the things I am about to but it is not fair for me to have to deal with this for the rest of my life. My way has never been to keep things to myself but that is exactly what I have done, especially for the last 10 years, out of respect for the fact she is Dave's mother. I just can't do it any longer, not without doing harm to my own psyche.
Five days after Dave died, his mother invited me over for lunch and as we were having dessert, she announced to me that I needed to vacate the house and the farm, which she owned but which had been our home for the last ten years. To say that I was shocked by this announcement would be understatement. I had not even completely processed that the love of my life was gone forever when she dropped this bombshell on me. Just like that, no warning, no nothing. Just blurted it out over a sandwich and some cookies.
First of all, for the entire time that Dave and I were together, she never really accepted the relationship. I don't know whether she secretly hoped that if I was out of the picture Dave and his ex-wife would get back together or what. (Of course, that would never have happened, even if I had disappeared off the face of the Earth. His ex sealed her fate with him way before I ever even met him.) From the first moment that I met his mother. she has been remote and uninterested, when concerned with me. I cannot recall anything that I ever did to deserve her derision, other than to not be Dave's ex-wife. He just loved me in a way she never understood and I think she was jealous.
Our initial meeting set the tone for the next 15 years of our relationship. We were living in a little house at Cape Hatteras and Dave's parents came visit us. Almost from the moment she stepped in the door, before Dave even introduced us, his mother burst into tears like a child having a tantrum. It seemed strange to me at the time but I really didn't think too much about it. Dave had his say with her, told her that he was with me now and that was that, so I thought that would be the end of it. I think she decided then and there that I was somehow the cause of Dave's divorce but trust me, I had NOTHING do to with it. Since she basically knew NOTHING about me, that can be the only explanation.
I have never, to my recollection, had someone so much dislike me before they even got to know me. In fact, lots of people really like me. She, on the other hand, had made up her mind way before she had ever even met me that she did not. In retrospect, I am sure her ears were filled with the nonsense of a jealous ex before we finally met and being the easily led type of person that she is, it does not surprise me. And, truthfully, I can't say that I really took to her either. I don't have much patience for women who act like spoiled children to get their way. She always seemed aloof, distant and down right cold to me but in the beginning, I chalked it up to our getting off to such bad start. Plus we lived 3000 miles away for a long time and it was not really a problem. Not until we moved back to N.C. and right next door to her.
Dave and I talked often about his mother's attitude towards me and he always apologized to me for the way she treated me. But then he always reassured me by saying that anything she said or did didn't matter to us because I was his family. Of course, if she knew he had ever said that, she would immediately become defensive and think that he was being ungrateful for all the things she did for him. He wasn't, though. Just the opposite. He was extremely grateful for her support and help over the years, so much so that he gave up the last 10 years of his life living beside of her so that he could be there to help her if she needed him. (And he did it for his dad, who was very ill for a long time.)
I know that she has always thought that I didn't appreciate what she perceived that she had done for me but the fact of that matter is that she never did anything for me personally. I was married to her son, she did things for him, and so I received the benefit by proximity. She never cared enough about me as a person to even ask me anything personal about my life before I met Dave or about my kids, family, etc. She simply didn't give a damn.
The fact that she was able to look me square in the eye just 5 days after Dave he died and tell me that she was renting our beloved farm to someone else confirms everything I have said so far. If she were to deny it, she would be lying to everyone, even herself. She claimed that she could not afford to pay the taxes, etc. on the property and that she needed the income. (We lived there rent free for 10 years, in exchange for being there on the family farm. We didn't ask for that arrangement. It was offered freely by Dave's parents and had everything to do with why we moved back to North Carolina from Oregon. We loved Oregon and would not have left, had we not been enticed to do so. Or we would have lived nearer the ocean that we loved so much.) She basically told me to get out, over a sandwich and homemade cookies. Just like that. Who does that to the grieving widow of their only son?
I might believe her reasons, if she had said any or all of that, before Dave died. If all those things were true the week after Dave died, why were they not true while Dave was still alive and able to talk about it and help me make decisions about what I was to do after he was gone? She certainly had every opportunity to do so. Dave stayed at her house on and off from December of 2009 until hospice came in during the last few weeks of his life (March 2010). Her house was so much bigger than ours and it was just her living there, so it just made sense. Also, she wanted to be able to help with Dave's care and so, over the great misgivings we both had about it, we had hospice set up at her house.
At any time,while he was there, she could have sat us down and explained her plans, her situation, given us any kind of hint as to what she was going to do. Dave was completely lucid and functioning until the last 2 weeks of his life, so that was not a consideration. His mother had every opportunity, over the course of those last four months, to say something to us, and yet she kept silent. Dave trusted her to do the right thing and wouldn't have asked her to make any promises about me and the farm because he believed her to be a better person than she proved to be. She not only betrayed me, she betrayed him.
And I know exactly why she didn't say anything. She was afraid that Dave would make her promise things she didn't want to promise. She was afraid he would ask her to let me stay in the house and on the farm when all she wanted was for me to be gone as soon as Dave was no longer alive. The sad irony of that is that I would never have stayed that close to her with Dave gone. But, because the farm was our sole source of income, I would have required a few months to complete my growing season. By evicting me at the time and in the manner that she did, my entire 2010 season was ruined and so I had no way to produce any income.
With no income and no savings (that was eaten up with uninsured medical bills from Dave's cancer long before he died) I was left not only very nearly homeless but unemployed and penniless. My mother in law assumed that my parents would just take me in with open arms, which they did, but they did not have room for me and the trappings of the last 10 years of my life. I have everything I own in storage, paying for that by selling off my possessions to cover the cost. So far, I have had to sell many of Dave's things as well as those of my own, just to pay for keeping my things in storage. I know many widows who say that they have trouble dealing with just packing up their husbands' things. Imagine if you had to sell off those things before you had even wrapped your head around him being dead in the first place.
Yet, through all of this trial, I keep coming back to one thing. The fact that Dave loved me so very much. Many times he told me he loved me more than he loved any one or anything in his life and that is more precious to me than any things that were his. I only wish that he could have foreseen what his mother was capable of and that we could have avoided this situation. One thing it has done to me is to make me so much less likely to trust people so readily, especially those who are supposed to care.
“You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.”
