A Note From the Daughter-In-Law

Elizabeth Draughn (Liz to her friends, mom to me) will be sorely missed.  She was a passionate woman.  Passionate about her son, her life, her beliefs and her friends.  I’ve made many calls on behalf of the family this week, notifying those near and far that Liz is no longer with us, and there is a consistent theme in the responses that I’ve gotten, “I’m so sorry, I loved her very much – she was like a sister to me.”

Mom did that.  She inspired deep and sincere love and she gave it back tenfold.  She shared so many stories over the years.  Some of my favorites were stories that she told of her mother and father.  Her mother has been gone for about 30 years (maybe more) but every single time she spoke of her mom, it was with both a light and a sadness at the same time.  She loved and respected her mother and took care of her until her death (sometime in the 70’s).  She adored her father.  He was clearly the single most influential man in her 86 years.  He has been gone for at least 50 (maybe 60 years).  He died suddenly and she was never able to get over the pain of losing him.  She spoke of his kindness, and felt his love and protection every day they were together.  To the day she died, she believed her father watched over her, and I believe it too.

She had fun.  As a teenager, she wore scandalous panty hose and red lipstick when it was thought that only fast girls did that, and boy did she enjoy telling me about how much fun it was!

I learned recently that she had her heart broken as a young woman.  It surely didn’t keep her from loving again, stronger and deeper.  I do truly think that she viewed her son and the relationship that she had with him as the healing balm to several old wounds.  It became clear to me that by letting me into her life, she was – in a way – gifting me with her greatest love, her son Mark – my husband.

Her son was the light of her life.  They were truly partners in crime, in the sweetest sense of the word.  From her Mark learned that innate curiosity was a good thing.  His incredible thirst for knowledge and information, his desire to learn new and different things, all came from her.  She welcomed every opportunity to both teach him and to let him learn on his own.  He tells me stories that he would ask her “Mom, what is this for???” and she would respond “Look it up” or “Get a book on it from the library.”  The difference between her reaction and other mom’s is that she would then put action to words.  She would take him on adventures, to the library or bookstore or wherever they needed to go to get the answer.  Through her son, I was gifted with a small degree of that curiosity which has caused me to expand my horizons and for that I am grateful.

We didn’t always agree and she was truly one of the most stubborn women that I’ve ever met.  The biggest argument that we ever had was, ironically, about her last wishes.  Mom and dad asked Mark and I to put together legal health and power of attorney paperwork that would allow us to be there for them when they needed a greater degree of assistance and they didn’t want us to experience any difficulties when working on their behalf.  When it came time to discuss her final wishes, she said that she wanted to be cremated.

At the time (and even to some degree now) that seemed strange to me.  I’ve experienced quite a bit of death in my life.  My mom, dad, grandmother and grandfather have all passed.  I told her that I wanted to have a wake and a funeral (because that is what I’ve always done).  She was mad and said that she really wanted to just be cremated and have her ashes scattered over her father’s grave.  I told her that we would cremate her, but that “You’ll be dead, you won’t know or care what I do and I want to have a wake when you die.”

Let me tell you, you haven’t seen pissed until you’ve seen 5’4″ of pissed off 84 year old Polish woman.  Her words were something like, “If I can’t trust you to accept my wishes when I’m gone, how can I trust you when I’m still living.”  Boy-o-boy, did that hit home.  Round 1 to the little pissed off Polish woman.  I apologized and told her that I would fight for her right to leave this world in whatever manner she wanted.

So on Wednesday of this week, we are going to the funeral home to pick up the ashes of my beloved mother-in-law.  We will make every effort to follow her wishes to the letter.

Mom, I will remember you every single day for the rest of my life and I will never ever see chamomile tea, potpourri or pipe-cleaners without thinking of you with the same love that you showed me every single time we were together.