Journey's End. Journey's Beginning.

Last week I wanted to write about the bitter sweetness in my heart of the process of cleaning my mother-in-law's home and Pascha.  How much I wanted to be in the church, but could not.  How each time we have lost a parent, we have lost a Pascha.  Sometime hindered by surgery or death or in this case the house and its contents. I know that the work we did was an act of love, but it was not fun.  I felt as if I was at the tomb all the time.

Going through my mother-in-law's things was a process I never ever wanted to do, but one I had to do.  People would say, "How much do you want for X?" and I would think, "Do you have a mother-in-law in your back pocket?"  Things I never would have guessed happened.  People fighting over broken things.  People wanting broken things.  People not taking some of her beautiful clothes.  I had to bag so many of them for donations.  Don't get me wrong, I know it's a beautiful thing to donate the clothes, but I was surprised I did not have a line up for them.  She kept things of her husband's.  They did not have a lovey-dovey relationship, yet no one ever really  knows what goes on in one from the outside.  I can tell from what she kept, that she truly loved him.  On the last day, we had to hurry out the door, but I said my good-byes to them both.  The first time I entered their home, my Tata said to me that I was in my home, and to treat it as mine.  I hate that I have lost them.  I know their love lives in me blah, blah blah, but I can't have coffee with them.  That is what hurts, not that they loved you, but that you can't be with them the same way.  You can't have coffee with them

On to the next stage.  I get to go home and I get to take my family with me.  I said to my husband that his dad must have been a powerful person to have his dream of having his family in the US live on after his death.  I know it's the right move.  I know I have the blessing of those who have gone before us and those living.  Now to make the dream true.  Well if I recall from my father-in-law that's going to take great effort and belief.