Elizabeth Copp Woodsum died today, 18 days short of her 100th birthday. For 54 of those years she was my mother-in-law and for the initial rocky years of that relationship she was my nemesis. She did not like the idea of her daughter Lorna marrying me and went so far as to tell my mother upon their first meeting that she would oppose the marriage with everything she had in her. My mother upon hearing that pretty much took it the way I imagine the Virgin Mary took it when Pontius Pilate turned his back on her Jesus. How could he? How could she? 

Although I took Betty’s hostility better than my mom did, it was a strange experience to be so disliked by someone, especially someone of such importance to my future. I had been voted Most Popular Boy in my high school graduating class after all. Everyone liked Dan! Until Betty. That was the loss of a different kind of innocence. And that’s what made her such a major figure in the novel of my life where most everyone I have ever encountered takes a part like a character in a sprawling Dickens saga. 

I call her the Dowager Countess Betty here because I thought of her every time I watched the great Maggie Smith engage the role of Violet Crawley in Downton Abbey. Like Violet, Betty was strong-willed, set in her ways, and elitist. But she was also enormously talented, driven, and quite fun to be with in spite of herself. All of that would be revealed to me over the long period of our time related. But in those early rocky years, Lorna’s unwavering love for me and my own good sense of humor helped me deflect the antipathy. Good thing, too, because there were moments then when the antipathy was pretty intimidating, like my first Thanksgiving visit to the Woodsums when Betty invited a crew of Lorna’s ex-boyfriends to the house. 

Again, comparisons with Downton Abbey come to mind because Betty’s objections to me were largely based on religious, political and class differences. Sybil Crawley, Violet’s beautiful granddaughter, falls in love with Tom Branson, the family chauffeur…Irish, Catholic, and politically active in Ireland’s struggle for independence. Those elements nearly perfectly mirror the dynamic between Betty and me…where my working class roots, Catholicism, ethnicity and political activism were prime sources of discontent for her. 

What finally changed it all? The turning point seemed to be the birth of our daughter Meagan…kind of like it was with the birth of Tom and Sybil’s daughter with two notable exceptions. Unlike Sybil, Lorna did not die after giving birth and we did not baptize Meagan Catholic—probably not insignificant differences.  

Then at one point in my meandering career, Betty played a pivotal role by fully financing my first foray into book publishing. The book, The Red Sox Reader, went on to rousing success, and Betty took great pride in that success. That became a very real bonding experience between us. 

Betty’s husband Bill and I bonded as well over both being married to such irrepressible women as Betty and Lorna. Once Bill told me the story of how Betty had been after him to go up on the roof of their condo and trim the palm tree fronds that were flapping against their windows. Bill in his 80s at the time kept putting her off by insisting that it was a job for the condo management. One day he came home from golf to find Betty…also in her 80s…up on the roof. She had a saw in hand and was cutting away the fronds herself. “Bill, my brother,” I exclaimed, “that’s my life with Lorna!”

Over time Betty and I settled into a quite comfortable co-existence, undergirded I believe by a mutual love and respect. I often fret these days that the big, loud wretched issues that divide people in general are too overwhelming for love to overcome. It helps to revisit literary creations like Downton Abbey occasionally to remind ourselves that the struggle between harmony and division is a long running one. To give up on the struggle is to give up on the best part of ourselves…and deprive ourselves of the joy that comes from reconciliation. 

Below is the climatic scene from Maggie Smith’s final appearance in Downton Abbey. I doubt I could’ve written a better scene for our own Dowager Countess Betty….