In Memory of Kay

Our house is filled with sadness and saturated with spirit after my mother-in-law passed on this past Epiphany morning. Her leaving was imminent but untimely in the daily strides of those of us related to her. We are paused and reeling.

She was one of my most faithful readers and she was persistently supportive of Enclave, even though we rarely agreed on the political issues that I engage. She was generous in her praise of my writing and I tried to reciprocate by posting family pictures regularly, but solely for her benefit, because I knew she stopped by daily. I shy away from sharing my personal life in this impersonal medium full of faceless people willing to take advantage of such dispensations. But posting family pictures was always worth the risk when I knew that it would make her happy to break up my ponderous writing with bright photos of her very own family. I had no other reason.

Now that she is elsewhere, we are finding out that she had a much grander reputation in her small Missouri hometown than she let on, than we bothered to unearth. Her passing was front-page news there. The public library is going to name one of their special collection rooms for her. When I consider all of that in this relatively puny blog, then I think myself lucky to have called her my mother-in-law. But I am merely one lucky soul among a host of fortunate family and friends.

So, I owe her this one last photo of a granddaughter's love and the perpetual wish, "Godspeed, Kay."