The beginning of this year has been relatively uneventful until recently. J has continued his barista job and his moods might be evening out a bit, and his confidence may be increasing. S is staring down the barrel of finishing his junior year and all the decisions and unknowns that are just around the corner. So am I, honestly, and I think we are both doing an admirable job of avoiding it. I haven’t traveled for work since December; I was supposed to be in LA right now, but that trip got cancelled. I’ve been using the Hallow app to try and figure out Lent without church, and feel pretty good about where it’s taking me. I feel calmer, more focused, less reactionary. I feel stronger in my faith and I feel less guilt about being separate from the church at this point in my life. Relatively smooth sailing … until this past week.

Five years ago, my father-in-law was diagnosed with stomach cancer and had to have his entire stomach removed. Whether or not this was a decision he agreed to and wasn’t pushed into by my MIL is a little murky. There is a lot of complex background and baggage about my in-laws, and specifically my husband and his father, so add that into the general stress and responsibility that goes along with aging, sick, fiscally irresponsible parents, and you can pretty easily get the picture. On Tuesday of last week, after I got home from a long day at work and a long commute to and from Chicago, my husband’s mother calls and asks for someone to come down and help her with my FIL who is not eating, in pain, generally wasting away, and needs to go to the hospital. She is at her wit’s end and doesn’t know what to do.

Due to the awkward, painful relationship that my husband (T) has with his dad, and that work almost always come first with T, he said he couldn’t do it. So, I said that I would go. His mom very rarely asks for help; they are a stubborn, prideful family that doesn’t like to show weakness in any form. Because she called, I took it to mean she was desperate and so I said yes, rescheduled my meetings and my day, and committed to going.

I drove to my hometown first thing on Wednesday morning to help her at the hospital with him, talk to his doctors, generally just be there to try and get her the solution she wanted (help his pain and get him to eat). Give her a listening ear and provide her with gentle guidance, if she wanted it. Of course, the doctors couldn’t do much of anything, couldn’t force him to stay and get the treatment he needed. None of the pain killers were working for him, the doctor recommended he stay in the hospital while they keep an eye on him and give him more pain killers. I encouraged him to stay, for him, but also so my MIL could get some sleep, but he wouldn’t do it. He wanted to go home, and so they had to release him. After my MIL took him home and I picked up his prescriptions, I drove the 2.5 hours back to my home and was emotionally and physically exhausted from the day, cried, went to bed early, felt helpless but ready to move on with the week.

Long story short, my FIL took a turn for the worst in the middle of the night, and both T and I were back in our hometown by 8 am the next morning, but we didn’t make it in time and he passed away before we could get there.

Death can be so complicated when the person who died was kind of a crappy human. Especially when that person is your dad and has hurt his family in myriad ways for years while having a veneer of decency to those outside the family. The goal at this point is to make sure T’s mom, who has turned her head to his various sins for their whole marriage (more than 50 years), gets to the next stage of her life in a healthy, happy way.

As I was driving down on Wednesday morning, I was struck by the beauty of the rural countryside and how a huge part of me, for better or worse, belongs there. I was born on a farm in Indiana. I drove those country roads on beautiful spring days with my dad when he started selling seed corn and soybeans and alfalfa to farmers. I breathed that country air and felt that strange freedom that you can only feel with fresh air in your lungs when you are a long way from the city. I am equal parts in love with and ashamed of where I came from. For better or worse, it’s part of me.

It’s a strange thing going back to where you grew up when someone dies. It’s familiar, but changed. It’s a mixture of memories, both good and bad, and assessment on whether it is better than it was or worse than it was when you lived there. It is uncomfortable and strange and still, it is home somehow. This time, in my hometown, I thought people seemed happier than they used to be in the restaurants and hotel. There is more money in the town I grew up than there was when I lived there, but at the same time, the neighborhood I grew up, which was always on the bad side of town, is worse then it was when I lived there. Some of it is almost ghetto-like. Another illustration of the nation’s widening gap between the haves and the have-nots. I guess as long as you stay on the right side of town, everything’s fine. Except that our entire tank of gas got siphoned when we were parked in the hotel on the “right side” of town overnight. The meth problem is real and the greasy underbelly of my hometown is still there, still kicking, alive and well, just look behind the shiny new strip malls and Holiday Inns. Don’t let the chain restaurants fool you. It was time to go home on Saturday night. T’s sister was there from Houston. We did all we could do. When she leaves, we will grasp the baton again.

We will navigate what my FIL’s death means to us and our relationship with his mom as we move forward. For the time being, it will require us to work harder, be more present, and be less selfish with the small amount of time we have that isn’t dedicated to our own life responsibilities. I don’t want to share my time with people who have always made my life harder, but it is the right thing to do and I don’t want to be a crappy human, and I don’t want my kids to think I’m a crappy human. Even as they are on the cusp on adulthood, they are always watching … only now they understand the context of your decisions. I want to contribute and be a good person, even when it’s hard. Especially when it’s hard.