Reality Check

In the past couple of days I've posted a few things to social media. Light-hearted things, for the most part: travel notes, a comment here or there to someone else’s message. 

Reality is that my return to the U.S. was accelerated by a day so that I might desperately try to get back to Texas in time to tell my dying mother-in-law how much she meant to me.

This was the woman who was ready to love me for no other reason than that I was important to her son. She was the queen of instant and sometimes accidental quips. Her ability to listen without censure was legendary. Her laughter was quick, comfortable and often at her own expense. 

My mother-in-law had the ability to quietly shine her light on any and every one. You could not come within her orbit that she wasn’t willing to welcome you to her life. And this week that life suddenly began to ebb away.

Reality is that my flight touched down in Dallas around midnight and after a couple of brief stops I drove to the nursing facility, arriving just before 3 a.m.

Reality is that for the next 22 hours, my world revolved around that sweet, frail woman in the hospital bed.

And for those of us who sat with her, holding her hand, telling her over and over how much we loved her, sometimes Reality became too heavy to bear.

In those times, I would check out of my reality and visit yours. Your posts and pictures became little breaths of relief, a reminder that Reality is fluid and multiplaned.  

In the small hours of this morning, my beloved mother-in-law gently took her last breath.

Reality is, I miss her.