The Last Book You Ever Read

I’ve had three different posts half-written and almost ready to send over the last few weeks. I was going to share all of things that I’ve loved this summer, another installment in our writing series, and the follow-up to this personal essay. Then my mother-in-law, who has been ill for much of this year, took a turn for the worse.

I have always said that my husband is lucky. He comes from a normal loving family with a brother and a sister and two parents who adored them all. He had a great childhood. An even better adolescence. And he made it to the age of 51 and still had both parents.

Had.

Kay Lawhon passed away last week. Sudden but not unexpected. We did not make it back in time.

The following days were spent with my father-in-law. We played endless games of Sequence and ate our weight in casseroles. We talked and laughed and watched Wheel of Fortune every afternoon. We practiced the ministry of presence—just trying to provide a bit of normalcy before he has to be fully alone for the first time in 56 years.

And every day I wandered around their house, looking at bookshelves and end tables wondering what she was reading at the end. That is the thing I most had in common with my mother-in-law. Kay was a teacher for over thirty years and there were few things she loved more than reading. Mostly fiction, but she also enjoyed memoir and the occasional biography. I cannot count the number of times she poured me a glass of wine and asked if I’d read any good books lately. “So many!” I would say. And we’d finish the bottle by the time one of us was done praising Diane Setterfield or Khaled Hosseini or Marcus Zusak or Charles Portis.

Kay loved children’s books in particular and kept every single one that passed through her home or classroom. She gave me boxes of them when I had our first son. And I still have them. Original Golden Books and Doctor Seuss so battered that the pages are falling out. Bruce’s Loose Tooth: Fun with a Moose and Goose was a favorite of my husband’s when he was a boy—and loved by all of our sons as well. I have always been fond of the books she gave me. But they feel even more precious now.

I finally broke down toward the end of the week and asked my father-in-law what she had been reading at the end. He opened her Kindle (I hadn’t thought to look there) and found that she was about one hundred pages into The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride. I downloaded it to my Kindle that night.

Here’s the truth: I’m afraid to start reading. Because once I finish, I’ll never have another book recommendation from her. The first novel Kay told me to read was True Women by Janice Woods Windle. I was dating her son at the time and eager to make a good impression, so I borrowed the copy that she offered, and then brought it back later that same year when we got engaged. What an auspicious beginning! We had a great relationship and I loved her deeply.   

I’m not quite sure when I’ll be ready to begin The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store. But here is one thing I do know: Kay never got to finish the book, so I will finish it for her.