When a child is lost

My heart goes out to Keltoi and his wife on the loss of their wonderful 2-year-old grandson who drowned two weeks ago, and to Christian singer/songwriter Steven Curtis Chapman and his wife on the loss of their 5-year-old daughter who was accidentally run over in their own driveway, by a car driven by their teen son.

I think I may know why they say "survived by" in obituaries.

To me it feels like a terrible travesty when parents and grandparents outlive their children and grandchildren.

Losing a parent is painful enough, but something that can perhaps be looked at philosophically when someone in their 80s or 90s dies. "He lived a full life," perhaps we can say.

In the play (and later movie) Steel Magnolias by Robert Harling (see the IMDB link here http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098384/http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098384/http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098384/) M'Lynn wails that she was always ready to go first. I'm with M'Lynn.

While I was researching an article on Meals on Wheels of Ellis County, I was struck by the differences observed in two elderly women I interviewed. They were about the same age -- late 80s, and I recall.

One woman had 7 children, and she had outlived them all. The other had 10 children, and they were all still living. It's hard to describe (and harder to document as absolute proof) the difference in these two women's attitudes. Asked about their families, one said, "I had seven children and they're all gone." The other said, "I had 10 children and they're all still alive." The one whose children had all predeceased her was actually more fit and mobile, but I would have to say from just that brief meeting that the other one seemed much happier, like she had a purpose as the matriarch of that clan.

Someone on an online forum asked the question "What do you want to do before you die?" Sort of a "Bucket List" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0825232/. I said I wanted to enjoy grandchildren. Even though I feel my articles, books, work will be a sort of legacy, I hope to live to see my children build their own nests, raise their own fledglings.

When that doesn't happen -- when a child dies, the pain is so acute it's hard to imagine that you could "get over it." It's more likely that the best we can do, at least in the short term, is to survive it.

Long live our children, and our children's children.

Momzilla: A Groom's Mom's Code of Ethics to Counter Horror Stories About Monster-in-Laws From Brides Everywhere

Delighted that my oldest son popped the question to a young woman we instantly loved (see the happy couple in New York, on the left), as a firm believer in internet research I set out to Google my way to being the ideal mother-of-the-groom. (That's MOG, for those who don't do Wedspeak.)

The tales of woe I found online were disheartening. Diva Mamas, petulant parents who can't just let their grown children enjoy the wedding planning. Groom's mothers in serious competition with the villainesses of fairy stories -- sniping about the bride at the engagement party, taking out a contract when she's not invited to help shop for the bride's dress, snarling about how much the reception will cost. Just generally being, oh, impossible to please. http://www.youandyourwedding.co.uk/index.php/chatroom/topic/39709

When I got married, my mother-in-law told me she had been told her job at the wedding was to "wear beige, show up and shut up." I love her more every year, and I am grateful that in addition to adding no negative notes to our special day, she has been a blessing at every turn. Perhaps one benefit for my son's bride is that, like my mother-in-law before me, I live far away from the wedding planning epicenter -- to paraphrase an old phrase from Fiddler On the Roof, "God bless and keep the mother of the groom ... far away from us!"

Near or far, it's my plan to err on the side of caution lest I spoil the wedding bliss of my son and my daughter-in-law-to-be (that's DIL2B in Weddingese) or as my friend Polly calls her son's wife, "daughter-in-love." So maybe it's time for a sort of a Code of Ethics for the Mother of the Groom -- a last-ditch effort to keep us from becoming Monster-in-Laws like the wretched Viola Fields character played by Jane Fonda in the 2005 Jennifer Lopez movie of the same name.

It could go something like this:

*I promise to help in any way I can to make their day special, so long as it's a way the bride and groom have identified as being helpful and it has been delegated to me. I promise not to pout or write my son out of my will -- instead, I will enjoy the day.

*I will remember that as the mother, my words have great capacity to hurt or heal. I promise to keep my mouth firmly shut, with a smile on it -- even if I have to use paper clips -- if I am ever tempted to gossip about any member of the wedding, to gripe about anything to do with the wedding, to compare any aspect of the wedding unfavorably to any other event, to complain that anything to do with the wedding is too cheap or too expensive. Even if it looks like the chapel has been swallowed by Barney, I will walk on my lips rather than say it's too purple.

*I vow to dress tastefully for the occasion, and not to outshine or detract from the wedding party; I will defer to the bride and her mother in an effort to harmonize with the day's sartorial splendor, and on this occasion above all others I will not try to wear a dress two sizes too small so as to appear to be wearing twin pigs fighting under a fancy blanket. (More apologies to Steel Magnolias.)

*I promise to be cordial and courteous to the mother of the bride, and to the bride's family. We are now part of the same extended family, and they are the ones who have produced this remarkable young woman who is now so essential to my son's happiness.

*I promise to start my life as a mother-in-law on the right foot by doing nothing that would come between my son and his bride. No guilt trips over not choosing his nephew Horace for a ringbearer; no loud, sighing reminders that I bore him after 21 hours of labor and walked him uphill in the snow both ways to nursery school.

*I pledge allegiance to my grown son's happiness. I promise to love him, honor his choice of a spouse, and to allow him to be a grownup, and to cherish his chosen bride.

*And as I sit in that August wedding, side by side with my own groom and my own dear mother-in-law, I promise to remember it's not my wedding. I'm not the center of attention, I'm not the icing on the cake. I will not indulge in a single hissy fit, shed anything but happy tears, or do anything to inspire a single drop of drama or to put anyone but the Happy Couple in the limelight. I will repeat (under my breath) if necessary "It's their day. It's their day."

And I have my beige dress all picked out ...

-- J. Louise Larson http://familyrootsandwings.blogspot.com/