The stepmother-in-law – a fairytale nightmare

I FEEL terrible.

I have said some awful things in the past about my stepmother-in-law.

Well… she was asking for it. No one should be a stepmother and a mother-in-law at the same time. In fairytales people with both these afflictions would die terrible and agonising deaths.

My stepmother-in-law escaped lightly. She just took a breath and keeled over.

Yesterday.

And that’s why I feel terrible.

I shouldn’t. It all seems a bit of a nonsense to me.

I mean, she was a miserable and manipulating old harridan when she was alive; I’m sure she hasn’t changed now she’s dead.

That doesn’t mean I don’t feel sorry for her. She was born in the middle of World War I – hardly what you’d call a lucky star. Lenin was whipping up the Russian masses to a frenzy in which they’d slaughter a whole section of society (albeit the rich ones, so you can’t blame him); Freud was telling us sex is behind everything and Einstein was saying everything is relative. To sex, one must assume.

By the time she was 25 she was living through another war, which she said she enjoyed. She would. I reckon it was the last thing she ever enjoyed. I’ve known her nearly 30 years and in that time she moaned about everything, including me.

What happens to people like her when they die? I mean, she hasn’t done anything wicked (unlike fairy tale stepmothers). She doesn’t deserve to suffer the pain of a fiery hell. What with arthritis and me she had enough pain when she was alive.

But you wouldn’t want her in heaven.

She’d love it, of course. She’d have a captive audience of good people in white nightdresses who would have to listen patiently and sympathise.

But what kind of a heaven would it be for them!

They’d be clamouring at the gates within five minutes of her settling on to a cloud – and I don’t mean to get in!

She was 86. She reckoned I was a waster and she told me so.

I reckoned she was a miserable and manipulating old harridan (see above) and I told her so. We could — and did — spend whole days inventing exquisite and complex insults to heap on each other.

She used to snap her fingers at me when she wanted me to pick something up for her. I used to hide her walking stick when she wanted to go to the lavatory. She used to say no one liked her. I used to agree with her.

I’d like to be able to say she was miserable to the end, but she wouldn’t even give me that satisfaction. Before she died she had lunch, she joked, she smiled. She made everyone nervous. Then she took a breath and died.

My wife said it was a good way to go. I don’t think there are any good ways to go. Only ways that are less bad than some of the really bad ways. I’m sure my stepmother-in-law would have agreed with me. If so, it would have been the first time in our lives. Or, in her case, death.

She was a handful and she kept me on my toes and I’m going to miss her.