Turns out that at the end of her life, when we hadn't seen each other for years, she still cared about me too.
Whenever the topic of my mother-in-law comes up, I tell people to imagine Joan Rivers. Faith was tiny, even before cancer, and she was viciously made even tinier because of cancer.
She was blond, Long Island born and raised, Jewish, whip smart and opinionated - and she could be runway ready with a half-hour's notice. We were so different that the gods of New York must have conspired with the titans of Michigan, laughing themselves sick as they pulled the switches and pushed the buttons that would result in us meeting.
Sometimes we drove each other crazy, like when she would insist we were running out of gas when we still had half a tank, and I would absentmindedly lock us out of the car - with it running and worse, with just half a tank of gas.
A few weeks before she died, my ex-husband, Michael asked me to bring the kids to Maryland where Faith lived in a care facility near him. I wasn't sure how she felt about me anymore and wondered how seeing her would go. But when she introduced me to her caregiver, she said, "This is my former daughter-in-law, Teece, who for some reason I'm still very fond of. What can I say; shit happens."
Hearing that she still cared, I tentatively called her Mom again, and she didn't seem to mind.
She was in a lot of pain and very tired, but when Michael teased her, she'd close her eyes and make the blah-blah sign with her hand, having the last word without speaking. One day when we visited, we brought her a candle in an off-white bisque holder. She couldn't light the candle because she had oxygen tanks in the room, but I knew her well enough to know she'd like it for the bisque holder and for the fragrance. She had us place it on the television stand where she could see it from the chair which was where she now spent nearly every waking hour.
Since Faith's passing, memories of our 13-plus years together float through my mind. Once, when the kids were small, Faith was with us at a friend's party. For some reason, Michael had driven separately, so on the way home he was in his car, and I was driving Faith and the kids. Suddenly the car took a lurch and thumped down on one side.
"Oh my God! Did we just have a blowout? We just had a blowout!" Faith yelled.
"We did not just have a blowout," I said, knowing full-well that we had just had a blowout. But the dread of Faith suspecting we were neglecting our tire maintenance when we had kids to keep safe made me determined to will that tire back into one piece.
"Teece, don't you think you should pull over?" she gasped.
"Nope," I said, "We're fine."
The car rode like a wheelbarrow without the wheel, and the fact that I kept relentlessly pushing it on was a tribute to the pigheaded attitude I sometimes fell victim to when Faith was involved.
"Teece, really, don't you think we should stop?" she pleaded, and after a few more seconds, the fact that driving that way was idiotic and a danger to my kids finally sank in and just as my hubcap went winging into parts unknown, I pulled over. Michael pulled over too.
There was pretty much nothing left on the rim but a few shreds of clinging rubber, so Michael called AAA.
"What about your hubcap?" asked Faith.
"Well, I guess it's lost," I said. To me that was the least of our problems.
"Don't you think we should go look for it?"
I glanced in the direction the hubcap had flown and saw nothing but a guardrail, a treacherous drop and a thick ground-cover of brambles. I looked back at Faith.
"No, I don't think we should go look for it."
"But wait! Down there! Isn't that it?"
Down there, as she put it, was way down there where a faint glimmer of something metallic was barely visible.
"Even if it is, it might as well be on Mars," I answered.
"I don't mind! I'll see if I can get it!"
"Don't you dare!" I yelled, even as she was scampering off. "You'll kill yourself!" One leg swung over the guardrail and then the other. "It's just a hubcap!"
Before you could say, "Sir Edmund Hilary, Faith was beginning a sharp descent down the treacherous slope. I couldn't bring myself to watch, I was so sure she'd fall.
I took a peek when I heard a whooping victory cry and saw her at the bottom of the hill, waving the hubcap over her head like a first kill.
"For crying out loud," I sighed, laughing at the same time, "she's nuts."
Faith clamored up and hopped back over the guardrail, grinning and thrilled that she'd saved us from replacing the hubcap.
Never once did she lecture me about neglecting my tire maintenance. My fear that she would was just me being part of our problem.
Now the real problem is that she isn't here anymore.
