The last few months...

My mother-in-law in 1933

Once again it's been a long time since my last post. Even longer this time, I guess. May and June were very difficult months for us. My 87-year-old mother-in-law went into a decline, with trips to the emergency room just about every week. My husband helps his parents out a lot, more or less acting as their caregiver when they've needed it, so that meant a lot of time in the ER and the hospital with his mom and dad. The one week in May when his mother wasn't in the ER, he landed there with a severe abdominal infection (he's fine now, but it took a lot of antibiotics and it was several weeks before he could start eating normally again). Finally, in the later part of June, my mother-in-law suffered a major stroke which left her in terminal condition, and she passed away a week later. We had been planning a trip to Flagstaff in early July to see our son who lives up there. The funeral was a couple of days before we'd planned to go, so when it was over we decided to go ahead and get away for a much-needed break. We got back a few days ago and now I'm finally recovering enough to do stuff like write blog posts and do some work on my books.

My husband's siblings, who live out of town, were here for their mother's final days and had been coming in before then as they were able, but the brunt of the long hours at the ER and the hospital visits and managing the ever-changing medications and various problems with my in-laws' aging house fell on my husband. And someone needs to take care of the caregiver, so that was me. The uncertainty, the late nights and long hours of waiting, the stress and worry about what might happen next and what to do about it, took a toll on us both, mentally, physically, and emotionally. I'm starting to recover and get back into the groove on my books; I think my husband will be okay, too.

So, we're going to miss her. She was 87 and had been in poor health for several years, and it seemed like she was ready to go. But it's still hard to get used to the idea that when we go over to their house, she won't be there in her recliner with the volume on the TV news or whatever PBS show she's watching turned all the way up, eager to tell us about the latest thing she read or watched and to get the latest news about her grandchildren and great-grandchildren (our granddaughters). She was a Jewish woman who graduated from law school in a time and place when that was almost unheard of, she was a politics and history buff, and she loved reading and learning new things. In her last few years, she developed an obsession with the musical "Hamilton" (yes, my 80-something-year-old classical-music-loving mother-in-law bought the soundtrack to a hiphop musical and actually enjoyed it) and also with tracing her family history. I like to think of her finally having the chance to ask her grandfather where he really came from. She was a wonderful, loving, accepting mother-in-law and never spoke an unkind word to me, and she was always supportive of and interested in my writing even though fantasy really wasn't her thing. One of the last things she said was that her grandchildren and great-grandchildren were her legacy.

Anyway. I'll be back soon with a progress report on Heir of Tanaris and Defenders of the Wildings (still coming along, even if it's been a little slow lately).

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