The columnist's in-laws, Jim and Carol Sgro, cross a bridge during a 2014 hike in Metolius Preserve. 

I’ve cried more than I like to in the last two weeks, sometimes from reading my wife’s texts, sometimes talking to her on the phone.

While her goofball husband has been skateboarding like he’s 26 and not 56, Catherine has been in Illinois the past two weeks running a very sad and grownup errand, the kind no one wants to. But life doesn’t wait for us to want to, or I’d still be sitting in my childhood home procrastinating on homework.

In 1993, when I first met Carol, my eventual mother-in-law, she was only 51. I met her daughter, when we were cleaning hotel rooms in Healy, the gateway to Denali National Park, Alaska. I was 25, Catherine, 22. We began spending all our free time together, hiking, camping and talking, and fell in love.

Toward the end of the season Carol and Jim, Catherine’s father, came to visit. They were Midwestern and playful and in love with each other in a way my parents, more prone to bickering than affection, rarely if ever presented.

The four of us hiked to the summit of Mount Healy, a close-in peak that overlooked the small cluster of hotels and restaurants at the entrance to Denali National Park. Because it was their anniversary, Jim brought along a bottle of champagne to make a toast at the top. They were good at making occasions feel special like that.

They were more traditional than my folks, too. Carol had chiefly been a homemaker, and kept the books and did other office duties for Jim’s successful construction business. My mom worked fulltime from the late ‘70s on, and pretty much called the shots while my Dad, when he wasn’t on duty at the fire station, did most of the cleaning, laundry and cooking. He was ahead of his time, I guess, but mainly, someone had to do it. Housework just wasn’t Mom’s thing.

In my first decade or so of knowing Catherine’s family, I often felt like I hailed from another planet. Carol was motherly and nurturing — some readers will harumph at that, but young people still seem to crave nurturing, go figure — in a way that made me envious of Catherine and her brothers. She was guileless, open and loving. She would say things like “I’m proud of you,” even to me. They said I could call them Mom and Dad, Carol and Jim, I just never could bring myself to call anyone but my folks that.

For years when I saw her on visits, Carol would say kind and positive things, even if somewhat superficial: “You look good, Dave.” I happily took the compliments. Affirmations are my love language. At least it wasn’t “Too bad you don’t look better.”

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When it was time to say goodbye, she’d grip you in a hug a moment or two longer than you might be inclined to and say, “I love you.”

Well, Carol is 82 now and her memory has become faulty. Jim died a few years ago, and she can’t really manage her large, Springfield, Illinois, house alone with her nearest kid three hours away in Chicago.

Over the past year, Catherine and her two brothers, Pete and John, began planning Carol’s move to the Windy City, near Pete and his wife. In September, Catherine organized a small going-away party, for which we flew to Carol’s longtime home in Springfield.

It was a bittersweet visit. Over the past two weeks, Catherine and her brothers began readying Carol and the possessions she’d be taking with her to her one-bedroom in a high-rise apartment for seniors. Last week, that meant starting to go through the things she could and couldn’t take with her. She and Catherine took a train to Chicago over the weekend, and this week, Catherine has been staying with Carol, trying to get her accustomed to her new neighbors and new home.

The updates I’ve received have been a mix of moments of optimism, followed by questions from Carol about where she is and how long she’ll be there.

Both scenarios have made me cry. I think about Carol, about her current confusion, about the sad way we all live too far apart, the way my wife feels she’s always having to choose time with the people she loves, the way Carol would hold on an extra beat when you hugged her goodbye.

I can’t imagine how it must feel for her leaving her home after so many years. I know she’s just moved to a new one, and she’s already meeting other folks, but let’s not kid ourselves about what leaving home means: It’s not just familiar walls full of your stuff. A space also contains memories, the big and small life events that transpired there, and never will again.

Kurt Vonnegut once said, “The most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.” The older I get, the more I understand what he meant when he talked about community as a curative.

I hope you find yourself a community in your new home, Carol. I know you don’t want to leave Illinois, your lifelong home, but if it doesn’t work out in Chicago, maybe you should come to Bend anyway.

Because we love you, too.