My wife’s mother died this week. Catherine Wilson Payne, born in Fleetwood, England, in March 1929, had lived a rich life and raised four children to healthy, productive adulthood—one of them my wife, Colette. Mamma Payne proudly doted on her eight grandchildren from her home in Sanderstead, south of London. She was an affable, gregarious woman who could strike up a friendly conversation with a lamppost and you’d half expect the lamppost to respond.
My wife’s pain was palpable, especially since the death came rather quickly and she was stuck here on this side of the Atlantic because of weather delays throughout Europe. I understood her pain. My father died in July. I had seen men die before, some of them friends, but no death hit me as hard as this, a deep rending in the depths of my spirit that I’d never felt with other deaths.
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