I first met my mother-in-law twenty-four years ago, in the late autumn of 2001, during my first trip to Turkey.
I’d just been made redundant from my only recently secured job in Maidenhead — last in, first out — but had been retained as a freelancer.
The visit wasn’t long-planned. It was an urgent, spontaneous journey to visit my mother-in-law’s mother on her deathbed.
But the visit was probably overdue anyway. We’d married in London in August, our union too swift for either of our families. That would be rectified the following summer in Istanbul.
My mother-in-law was never a happy woman. She had been widowed early, and suffered a life of great hardship. But we had good times now and then. She visited us in England thrice.
On her first visit, she got on with our next-door neighbour like a house on fire through a love of knitting, despite no shared language. So too with my grandmother who lived nearby.
She also joined us for the formalisation of our adoption of two tiny souls all those years ago, sharing in that joyful moment.
However, in recent years, her health deteriorated rapidly, her heart broken by conflict within the family. We cared for her the past two summers at our place in Turkey, and through last winter here in England.
She was a shadow of her former self, lost to dementia. She was treated unjustly by her eldest children and grandchildren, and died estranged from some of them. As vehement atheists, they don’t fear their accounting, but they should.
My mother-in-law died yesterday morning, still heartbroken, bringing to an end a long life of hardship. She was buried this morning in her village in that deep forested valley, her final resting place close to the home she had missed for so many years.
May Allah have mercy on her soul, and compensate her for all the wrong done to her by those who should have cherished and honoured her. From Allah we come and to Him is our return.
Last modified: 4 February 2025
