Where I Stand 1976 — Hank Greenspun: Mother-in-law remembered for engaging countenance

Friday, Jan. 5, 2001 | 9:51 a.m.

Editor's note: Though today's installment of Classic Sun examines 1976, Sun Publisher Barbara Greenspun preferred to rerun a column by her husband Hank from a year later. This column appeared Oct. 10, 1977.

Jessie Georgina Ritchie, daughter of John and Rosena Willerton of Boston, Lincolnshire, England, died in Las Vegas Friday morning.

Burial services will be at Bunker Mortuary at 2 p.m. Sunday with interment at Woodlawn Cemetery next to her third son, Teddy, and her one and only husband, Joseph Ritchie.

Normally I would not mention obituary items in this space but for the fact that Jessie was kind of special to me. She was the grandmother of my four children, the great-grandmother of my children's children, the mother of my wife and my one and only mother-in-law.

Mothers-in-law have been stereotyped by writers, comics, cartoonists, and sons-in-law, and seldom to their advantage.

In fact, for all the days of a year set aside to honor mothers, fathers, veterans, grapefruits and every type of species, this past Sunday is the very first time a day has been chosen to honor mothers-in-law and there have been mothers-in-law for the millions of years that the males of the species have taken the females to be their mates.

Jessie Ritchie's obituary in this newspaper was not lengthy. In fact, it was all too short because Jessie was representative of the vast majority of women in the world who are born, get married, have children and die.

She built no massive buildings, did not find a cure for an incurable disease or even head up a large insurance company.

She was a part of the great undistinguishable mass of women who are content to be housewives, mothers, grandmothers and, with a little bit of luck, great-grandmothers.

This is their distinction and, though unimpressive for the pages of a newspaper, their mark is left on the ones they leave behind.

Jessie surely left her mark on me because it is written that "for a wife, take the daughter of a good mother." I did.

Jessie did not fit into the mother-in-law characterization because she never injected herself into the storms that sometimes cloud the marital horizons. I do believe that in any confrontation, she would have taken my side to keep the marriage in balance.

This surely was her desire because this was the story of her life. She was a totally married woman. Her world revolved around her husband. She was an absolute antithesis to the new trend of the liberated woman. It was she and her husband against the world and her eyes were only for him. When he died, much too early in life, she began to lose her eagerness for living and she never really recovered from her deep loss.

Jessie was a beautiful woman with classic English loveliness. She was witty, intelligent and might have been able to make a new life with someone else had she been of a different character. But even the thought of someone other than her Joe was abhorrent and shocking.

Her devoted children and grandchildren tried in every way to make her happy and comfortable, but she always shunned any society which would rival the love she had known and still cherished.

Her concession to happy times was going to bingo games with my mother and other women friends in Las Vegas who would call for her and bring her back to her door, waiting until she checked the house.

Her great capacity for love was transferred to her grandchildren, and my four were the recipients of a quite wonderful childhood of fanciful stories. She made the leprechauns of her Irish home come alive for our kids.

Many times I would caution her about the stories of the occult and supernatural which she passed on to wide-eyed, adoring youngsters and her reply was always, "These are things beyond our ken."

When her friends from the other side would visit at our home and the mysticism and the esoteric, like "men rising from their coffins to hold out their arms to their loved ones walking down the church aisles," became a little too much to swallow, I would remonstrate with Jessie that there were impressionable youngsters hanging on every word and she must not fill their minds with the things that seances are made of. She would put on her most extrasensory look and say; "Hank, there are things beyond your ken, too."

Jessie was a lady. Her English grammar was faultless, and there wasn't a crossword puzzle, including the New York Times, she couldn't master. But somehow, she could not seem to catch on to the ordinary, the simple life.

I don't believe she really had the heart to go on after Joe died; when her youngest son, Teddy, died suddenly, Jessie must have decided that she must go to those she loved so very much.

I guess no man ever sees all that his mother or mother-in-law has been to him 'til it's too late to let her know he sees it.

The family Jessie leaves behind sees it and will never forget it. The stories heard at her knee will never be wholly forgotten.

In the world of Jessie Ritchie, she has died but my children and grandchildren will not show the slightest surprise if she comes back to tell about it.

Whenever a story will appear of leprechauns and good fairies and hobgoblins and tables and walls jumping for joy, Jessie will be hovering near, cautioning about the things that are mystical and spiritual manifestations.

Jessie Ritchie is now reunited with her Joe and her Teddy. I don't know how or where, but a lifetime of devotion must have its happy ending in some great plan that, as Jessie would say, is beyond our ken.