The End of Shiva

So last night the week long mourning period for my father in law came to an end. My mother in law lit candles, and did her own version of a prayer. It was a tough week having her here. We wanted to be sympathetic and understanding, but she made it so amazingly difficult. Then it hit me -- she is our version of the great Seinfeld character Bubble Boy. Bubble Boy is a spoof of the movies, most notably one from my high school years starring John Travolta, where an immune suppressed kid has to live in a plastic bubble, and is so sad and endearing. The Seinfeld version makes the patient a supreme asshole. D2 came up with Bubble Sabta. This is a name with legs, I think. In any event, life moves on, and we had the business of attending to the celebration of D2's birthday. D1 made reservations at Christy's, our go-to celebration restaurant, and invited her boyfriend Joey, home from a corporate cruise. Wifey thought this might be the worst idea I had since trying to make a romantic connection between my cousin Steve and my sister of another mother, Mirta. We never took our in laws to fancy places. But I thought it would work out fine, and it did. The restaurant was packed, and noisy, and after a few aborted attempts at procuring the vital hot liquid, without which my mother in law, attempting to eat, will die, the nice Peruano waiter finally realized he had to nuke the tea, and it was hot enough. And they have chicken, the only thing my mother in law eats. The Ds, Joey, and I enjoyed cocktails, and the enormous shrimp cocktail. The Ds and Wifey had delicious fish, and Joey and I split two steaks (they had run out of prime rib!). The waiter brought some bread pudding with a candle, and we sang for D2. It was a lovely, lovely, evening -- a celebration of the young and living, following the proper mourning of the very old and departed. This am, D1 came back early from Mid Town, with some sort of healthy fruit bowl for her sister. We leave soon for the airport, so D2 can fly back to NYC and her awesome life there. Wifey and I will then return my suegra to her Pembroke Pines condo, and the old woman's new status as a widow. The plan is to move her to Palmetto Bay, to a condo we own and have rented out for the last 10 years, so Wifey will be just a 10 minute drive away, as the inexorable decline of a 91 year old progresses. Or maybe not. The woman is strong as an ox, and mostly sharp. She may easily make 100, or beyond. She told us her maternal grandmother lived to 94 -- on schtetl Poland, in the 1800s. Her own mother was killed young, by the Nazis. So maybe my mother in law is going to be like those Soviet Georgians on the old Dannon yogurt commercial. All I know is, life keeps flowing like a river to the sea, as the Scottish Jew Woolfson sang. And I hope it remains more about celebrating than mourning.