Show of Emotion

My husband and I were about to leave on the adventure of moving two thousand miles away from friends and family. We had spent the last three weeks packing up everything we owned and making arrangements. Our last night was spent at his parents’ house. We were set to stop at my parents’ house on our way out of town. Neither of us knew what our parents thought or felt, but we knew them pretty well, so we were fairly sure how things would go when we said goodbye.
Our fathers were typical men of their generation, so we did not expect any tears from them. A hug for me and a handshake for my husband was probably what happened. Oddly, after all of these years, I have no memory of either of their reactions. But our moms, that is another story.
My mom is a woman who shows her emotions easily, and the words “I love you” come out of her mouth on a regular basis. We dreaded saying goodbye to my mom. My mother-in-law was a quiet woman most of the time, but she was kind. She would whip up a batch of chip dip whenever asked, and she grated carrots by hand for carrot cakes. We knew we would be sad leaving her, but we were not worried about saying goodbye. That is why we were floored when she cried as she hugged us goodbye. We got in the car and decided it was a lot harder to say goodbye to her than we thought it would be. This made us dread saying goodbye to my mom even more. Twenty minutes later, we were doing just that, but my mom kept it together. (She later said that she balled like crazy after we left.)
I learned that day that my mother-in-law felt pain just as deeply as my mother did. I learned that just because she didn’t say she loved us, didn’t mean that she didn’t. I learned that just because a person does not show fear, pain, sadness, joy, love, etc. does not mean they don’t feel those things. We recently had to say goodbye to my mother-in-law for the last time. Some of our family cracked jokes which annoyed others. Some of us wanted food available during the hours of the wake, and some could not imagine eating at a time like that. The thing is, none of us were wrong. Everyone has to deal with grief in their own way. So, don’t judge someone’s reactions to things based on how you react to things. They most likely care just as much as you do, but they show it differently. After the funeral, we all got together and ate carrot cake (with carrots grated by hand) and chips with dip. We felt closer to each other than we had felt in a long time. Everyone agreed.