By Nell Mohney
In-law relationships are not always easy. Through the years, mothers-in-law have been the butt of comedian jokes. Fiction writers and country music singers have turned perfectly normal mothers into fiendish monsters once their children marry.
Perhaps that is why I, as a college student, so admired our neighbor Helen, who had taken her aged and ill mother-in-law, Myra, into her home and given her love and care. This was at a time when Helen could have had some freedom to travel, enjoy her grandchildren and enlarge her volunteer work.
Helen’s husband had died a year earlier, and their four sons were grown, married and were well established professionally. Why would Myra bring Helen into her own home since we all knew Myra was so difficult that even her own daughter would have nothing to do with her?
Once during a leisurely visit, I asked Helen about her good relationship with her mother-in-law. Laughingly, she replied it was not always that way. She told me how Myra had chosen someone else for her son to marry. Even up to the day they were married, Myra had used every means within her control to derail the engagement.