Reflections on Losing My Mother-in-Law

On the evening my mother-in-law died, I drove to pick up Josiah from soccer practice, thinking about how there is no good way to tell a grandson that his grandmother is gone. 

The moon rose, a perfect crescent hung low in the clear sky. Under the expanse of the night, the boundary between earth and heaven felt blurry. She was Here, and then she was There, a moment later.

Eternity is not so far away as we think it is. It is right there, one breath away, as simple as pulling back a curtain.

The shock of losing a parent is kind of like the shock of aging. (Hey now, how can I possibly be turning 45? Only old people are 45.) You know it’s coming, but still, it takes you aback when it actually happens. Not everyone loses a child in their lifetime, but everyone will lose their parents. It’s “normal,” but that doesn’t make it any less astonishing.

A parent is a fixed mark in life. Lose one, and the earth shifts under you. Life gets divided into two segments: Before Mom, and After Mom. 

My mother-in-law, Lupe Medina, died of brain cancer on September 8th. She was diagnosed at the end of July and left us only six weeks later. She had 4 kids, 14 grandkids, and 4 great-grandkids. And she was only 68. 

Lupe had one of those American Dream stories. She grew up in inner city Los Angeles; she was there for the Watts riots. Education wasn’t emphasized in her family, yet she graduated from high school, got a job working for LA County, and worked there for her entire career. She and Gil’s dad climbed their way into a middle class life for their kids. 

She was known for being unfailingly friendly and boundlessly generous. Once in Tanzania, Gil posted on Facebook that he was looking for someone to fix his Xbox, and the next day, she had put a new one in the mail for him. She never met a stranger, and even if she did, she would cheerfully give him her last dollar. 

Lupe was the kind of mom who would have been happiest if all her family members lived on the same block, so you can imagine how hard it was for her that we were in Tanzania for so many years. Our new home is just 45 minutes away, and when the kids started playing sports again, she was there at all of their games. Even in the spring, when she started losing the ability to walk, she still was determined to be there. 

Watching Lupe die was a lesson in why theology matters. She loved Jesus, and she loved her family, and as her physical capabilities were stripped away, her focus narrowed onto what was most important. She spent two weeks in the hospital, and on the night she came home, Gil asked her what she wanted for dinner. “The salvation of my grandchildren,” was her reply. She quickly lost the ability to speak, but before she did, many of her last words reflected concern for the eternal destiny of those she loved. 

Watching my husband grieve was a lesson in why theology matters. When the grim diagnosis hit home, I witnessed the spectrum of grief in my children–one in denial, refusing to talk about it, another in a constant rage, hiding grief underneath anger. But my children have not yet found their peace and hope in Jesus. Their dad has. So though I’ve never seen Gil so sad, I never saw him despair. There was joy in knowing his mom would be fully healed and whole. What was our loss, was her gain, and he lived like it. Her funeral service is coming up next week, and it was his idea to turn the reception into a picnic complete with a Wiffle ball game–because she would have loved it. And as Christians, we can laugh and cry at the same time. 

Living so close to the shadow of death for several weeks was sacred. Death is said to be natural, but it’s not. There’s something in the core of our being that tells us that this is wrong; this is not the way life is supposed to go. Accepting it with our chin up is possible only for the most stoical among us. Even Jesus wept at a funeral, because He knew, more than anyone, that death is not how the story should end. 

But for those who know Him, it’s also not the last word. We turn our faces upward; the Resurrection is coming. Eternity is right there, behind the curtain.