A few months ago, I think my mother-in-law Vada finally accepted that she was really 92, not 82 as she had insisted for a while, blaming it on that new math.

I don’t know if it was that she couldn’t fathom actually living that long, surviving the deaths of her daughter, dear cousins and friends, or if she truly believed that she was 10 years younger than she was, which she would tell everyone when I shared her age.

My daughter-in-law doesn’t know what she’s talking about, she used to say.

Vada died last week, 10 days after her 93rd birthday. We knew it was coming; she had been in failing health for quite some time and became very frail. Sometimes, she knew exactly where she was, who everyone was, and what they were doing. Other times, she was very confused. Once she told us that she was the nursing home administrator and she didn’t like how the staff was behaving.

She was used to running things, that’s for sure.

She was widowed young, when my husband was about 15 and his younger brother was 4. She raised them largely on her own,........

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