...in assisted living, she had the Hallmark Channel on.
All the men were handsome, the women, beautiful, the children, cute, and everyone was stumbling unexpectedly in to true love and romance in their highly successful high paying careers.
As my mother-in-law spent a long time withering away, in some emotional and physical pain, I was glad she had it.
Funny story: Whenever I visit a person for the first time, I check out their book shelves to try to understand something about who they are. When I went the first time to meet my future mother-in-law, this before I was actually in a relationship with my future wife - the "just friends" stage - I noticed that the book shelves were filled with these romance novels featuring pictures of hot guys and hot women on the covers in these sexy clothes and sexy embraces.
I kinda wish I didn't know this, but my mother-in-law's relationship with my father-in-law was not really "hot." Apparently he had a very low drive. However, when they were young, they were both very good looking; they could have been models for the cover of the dirty books. For my mother-in-law the books were happy fantasies that she couldn't realize.
On the other hand, as I was in love with my future wife although she didn't know it, I kinda figured that if she grew up around this stuff, she'd be pretty "hot" if we ever advanced to being lovers.
We did and she was.
This said, my wife's bookshelf was one belonging to an inquisitive mind built around science and justice. She didn't need those books.
We lived them.
On the other hand, our lives, I can say, were not Hallmark movies; they were filled with sound and fury, signifying everything, all the joys of struggling, really struggling toward deeper and and more profound love.
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