Sunday is my mother-in-law’s celebration of life. My husband and my brother-in-law are working hard on its preparations. 

The event is weighing on my husband. Between writing a eulogy and preparing his mother’s ashes— spooning off some into vials for her grandkids, I can see he feels blue. 

Family is flying in for the celebration. We are hosting a few. They are sharing old stories, chewing over past. The fights. The good times and the bad. The divorces and the relationships that lasted. 

"Remember how Grandma saw and heard apparitions and thought she was a mystic connected to the spirit realm. I was in amazed when I was a kid... Now I think it was Lewy body dementia."