![]() I thought it would be a fitting tribute to honor Mrs. My mother-in-law died on the third day of Pride month this year. Gathering as two couples, we created our own special memories in San Francisco, Puerto Vallarta, the Grand Canyon, Los Angeles and Al’s and my home during many dinners with our chosen San Diego family. Killen could be free from their grandparent duties and fully enjoy our doting on them. Simple gestures, such as offering food, conveyed her deep well of affection that now included me.īefore Al’s father died, the four of us took vacations together. Rather than flexing her parental authority by rejecting her son’s relationship, she prioritized her love for him. He heard the caller ask, “Is Doug home?” Al said, “Is this you, Mom?” To which she replied, “Yes, but I need Doug to help me with the VCR.” ![]() One time she called our home - it was still the landline era - and Al answered. She relied on me to program her video recorder to tape her beloved UConn women’s basketball games. She knew how much I loved her baked macaroni and cheese and made it a tradition to serve it for us in Connecticut. ![]() Killen made sure to stock her refrigerator with my favorite New England soda, birch beer (feel free to look it up). Yet over time, she and I developed a mutual respect that eventually became a relationship with a son-in-law whom she never expected she could love. We were busy just trying not to be rejected. I never imagined I would have a “mother-in-law.” Such a thing was inconceivable for a gay male couple in those days. ![]() ![]() She was conflicted, but she was not the kind of person to deflect her moral conflict via hostility toward me or her son. Over the next few years, I would discover that meanness was not in her character. She was aloof, yet not rejecting or mean. She was accepting but drew the line at “never wanting to meet a man Al was with.” A daughter of Irish-Catholic immigrant parents, she found it too much in the mid-’80s to convey approval by welcoming someone like me into her home.Īnd yet, six months after Al and I met that summer in San Diego, here I was at her Wallingford kitchen table, sharing a meal of Al’s favorite scallops. This was a few years after her son Al, my partner (now husband) of 36 years, first disclosed to her that she had a gay son. We first met in her Wallingford, Conn., kitchen the day after Christmas in 1987. ![]()
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