My husband and my mother had hated each other for 27 years.
At nearly every family gathering, their dislike was impossible to miss.
There were clipped answers.
Forced smiles.
Long silences.
And, eventually, one of them would find an excuse to leave the room.
But they never told me why.
For most of my marriage, I believed their feud was simply one of those family conflicts that had grown too old for anyone to remember how it started.
I was wrong.
The truth had been buried for 27 years.
And I discovered it at my mother’s funeral.
My husband, Joe, and my mother, Margaret, had disliked each other almost from the day they met.
Mom never called him “son.”
Joe once told me he would rather work on Christmas morning than spend another holiday at her house.
At family dinners, they barely spoke.
If one entered a room, the other often found a reason to leave.
Whenever I asked what had happened between them, I received the same answer.
“We just don’t get along.”
“We’re from different worlds.”
