After Death
what I learned upon losing a beloved
I’m a fairly steady, practical person who had a wonderful albeit irregular relationship with a woman I am proud to be able to call a friend. She and I were very much connected through her son (my husband) and we frequently had long, chatty lunches to discuss everything from Broadway theater and whether the book was better than the adapted play, to intimate worries I had about the children (which she always brushed aside with the reassurance, “They’re amazing kids, and you’re an amazing mom; they’ll be fine”).
Our relationship was unique because it straddled both art/culture and family. She was significantly older than me but we were equals. She respected my intelligence and I respected hers.
I thought I knew my mother in law very well.
Once she had passed, people came out of the woodwork, more than one claiming to be her best friend. I was staggered. The woman had circles of friends who were now bereft, two book clubs that kept her incredible brain occupied, circles of colleagues, co-workers, supervisors, and luminary scholars, all of whom knew her, possibly better than I did — but each in a different way for a different reason and to varying degrees, many of them were missing large parts of her early life story, and even I and her own sons had massive questions about who she was before we knew her. None of…
