What you didn't know about your mother-in-law and will make you love her

It's an ugly word this mother-in-law in Spanish. I don't know why. Curiously, it has remained unchanged for millennia and etymologies find a common Indo-European root "swekru" that makes it very similar in very different languages. 

The word mother-in-law is automatically associated with its clichés: meddlesome, conflictive, domineering... And certainly there are many ways in which the role of mother-in-law can be misused; but it is normal for mothers-in-law to be a very important part of the family, loved and valued in spite of "their things" by sons-in-law and daughters-in-law. 

I have had the good fortune to accompany my mother-in-law in the last years of her life and I have to say that, although they have been hard because her progressive deterioration made her suffer and made it increasingly difficult for us to care for her, I will miss them. As the Pope points out when he refers to the "revolution of care", "there is a beatitude in old age, an authentically evangelical joy, which asks us to break down the walls of indifference that often imprison the elderly". Certainly, I (and the whole family) have felt blessed thanks to my mother-in-law, we have learned a lot and enjoyed her even though her life was no longer "useful" in merely human terms. 

In his recent apostolic exhortation "Dilexi te," Leo XIV makes this concrete by saying, for example, that "the elderly person, with the weakness of her body, reminds us of our vulnerability, even when we seek to hide it behind wellbeing or appearance." All of us, family and friends, who have accompanied her in her long old age have been receiving from her, free of charge, the greatest lesson that can be learned in this life: that we are all vulnerable and that we die! There is no greater rest for a person than to know that he or she does not necessarily have to be able to do everything and to always be able to do everything; that there are times when we must ask for help; that we all need everyone; that money, work or health give us the appearance of security, but that this is very fragile because they are lost from one day to the next; that the family is the best social security; that the prospect of death makes us enjoy life more and open us to transcendence where men and women find answers to their greatest longings....

The Bible gives us several references to mothers-in-law, beginning with the story of Ruth, who showed unparalleled love and loyalty to her mother-in-law Naomi, not abandoning her when they were both widows: "I will go where you go," she said, "I will live where you live; your people will be my people and your God will be my God; I will die where you die, and there I will be buried. I swear before the Lord that only death can separate us"; up to Jesus himself, who makes us appreciate mothers-in-law when he tenderly cured Peter's mother-in-law, his right hand: "bending over her," Luke recounts, "he rebuked the fever, and it passed away; and she arose immediately and began to serve them". 

Scripture also warns us of how dangerous it can be to misunderstand what it means to be a mother-in-law when it advises us: "a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife...". And the fact is that every new family that is born must break the umbilical cord that unites them to their family of origin because, otherwise, the natural discrepancy of opinions even in the most trivial aspects of life can provoke a real civil war and there are not few divorces that have in the mothers-in-law their detonator. Jesus goes to the extreme of recommending that we should put our faith in the middle ground if it is compromised by affectivity when he says: "Do you think that I have come to bring peace on earth? No, but division. From now on five will be divided in one house: three against two and two against three; father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law". How many marriages would have been saved if the mother had been cut off in time!

Returning to the beautiful thing about mothers-in-law, there is a fact that I repeat when a friend of mine who has been a father speaks badly about his mother-in-law. I ask him if he loves his children and he naturally replies that he does, that they are the best thing that ever happened to him. Then, I explain to him that before being in his wife's womb, his children were, in a certain sense, in his mother-in-law's womb, because the eggs that a woman will have throughout her life are formed while she is gestated inside her own mother's womb. Thus, the eggs that, once fertilized, gave rise to our children were formed many years earlier, in the womb of their maternal grandmother, your mother-in-law. And they stay in the womb!

Scientific curiosities aside, today I want to break a lance in favor of mothers-in-law, because it hurts me a lot to have lost mine. She gave me the best of my life: my wife, my children, so much learned, cried and laughed. Honoring the mother-in-law is a path of beauty, life and joy, I can attest to whoever asks. That is why, while researching the origin of the word, I was delighted to discover how the French address them as a sign of respect. With nothing less than the name belle-mère (beautiful mother). So today, and without setting a precedent, allow me to say goodbye "French style" with a big Merci belle-mère !