Can you be glad?
Well yes.

My ex-Mother-in-law died 3 and a half years ago.

Physically died, that is.

She suffered a couple of strokes in the preceeding years and degenerated - that's the right word - from a wonderful, active, healthy, happy woman who was far more of a mother to me than my own ever was into a gibbering wreck.

She had a few moments of lucidity during this period - not many - but enough for her to convey how much she understood that her stroke-addled behaviour was absolutely unbecoming of her previously dignified and proud bearing.

(I had problems with the wording on that paragraph. Dignified and proud is right. She'd never look down on anybody but she was absolutely confident in who she was pre-stroke.)

To see her so destroyed by the strokes, reduced to the ability of a toddler, was...I don't know what it was. I don't know how to word those emotions.

Ex Mrs. D (I'm being circumspect as friends read and post) still struggles with this loss.

I still struggle with this loss.

Then wannabe necrophiliacs post shite on here which is one of the reasons that I rarely bother with B3TA these days.

Perhaps these people don't have it within them to understand loss and grief. If they've never experienced it, they will at some stage. If they've experienced it and don't carry it with them, they're not really normal.
( The Disappointed Caravanner of the year, Thu 28 Feb 2008, 22:42, 1 reply)

Now be fair.
Everyone has different ways of coping. Also, there's a place for everything. There's a place for grieving, and there's a place for sick jokes and frivolity, and that place is B3ta.

There's no reason why B3ta can't have its serious moments...some of the answers on this QOTW demonstrate that clearly...but that's no reason to fire off at those trying to be light-hearted.
(Musuko, Fri 29 Feb 2008, 19:18, closed)