Beloved Matriarch

She had earned my love and respect because she had grown.

She’d evolved.

She’d pushed aside her biases, regrets, and grievances, and had looked for essential core values by which to strengthen the family.

She would have never needed to choose sides – or rather, she would have chosen both “sides” and pushed back those who wished to keep us separated.

She would have opened her large, warm home to all of us, kept us all safe and “off of the streets” – and maybe even would have advocated for couples counseling.

The point is, she would have given us all a buffer, a neutral ground, a place to recallibrate and regain bearings after the fall and hits we had all taken.

But she was gone.

Our family had been the last one standing since, with all of the weight of bitter prior generations haunting and pressing upon it to crack and shatter.

And no matter how innovative I was – how determined, how full of love, hope, belief, and far-seeing persevering perspective – it needed the command of our elder’s respect that she’d weilded to help save our fragile marriage.

But she was gone.

And the house along the sea ledge once so full of the triumph of love overcoming all still sat vacant, silent, and weathering away by ensuing neglect –

A testament to the greed and avarice of an inheriting daughter-in-law’s need for revenge upon her father’s memory –

With our matriarch’s memory unable to hold further sway beyond the symbolism provided in loss left holding the ashes of her mortality.