They rented a house of their own & we’d visit at times. Then they were able to buy a home. I don’t remember now what it was but I stopped visiting them, my husband would go alone to visit with his brother. It seemed that everyone who knew my brother-in-law would ask how he ended up with someone so self centered and I think I felt safe in my opinion of her.

A few years went by and they purchased some land and had their mobile home moved there. They didn’t have but a couple friends, they stayed pretty much to themselves. Then he & my husband had something happen between them & they quit working together.

My brother-in-law and his wife spent the next 8 years trying to decide on a house plan. As it turned out, the last thing they couldn’t agree on was the kitchen. They both had become pretty good cooks but neither one wanted the other one in the kitchen when they were cooking. They finally agreed on a house plan & went to a builder about getting it done.

She & I had started occasionally sending e-mails when our mother-in-law began having heart problems. Then we e-mailed about our pets & what to do when they got sick. I was beginning to think that we might be able to bridge the canyon that had developed between our 2 families if we could only get the brothers talking again. Neither one was going to be the one to say “sorry”.

It didn’t happen though. One evening my husband received a phone call from another brother who lived in IL. We were told that our sister-in-law that lived not 25 miles from us, had a massive stroke early that morning & had died. Because of the issues between the brothers, he felt he couldn’t call us for help.

I feel though that it started with me. Instead of being mad because the meat that I left out for supper was still in the fridge, I could have talked with her about what to do with it. Instead of being mad because she didn’t “see what needed to be done” around the house, I could have asked her to do certain things. And it went on and on.

The brothers are back to a great relationship again, but it should not have taken the death of his wife to do it. Who knows what those lost 15 years could have been like.