Remember: Speaking ill of the dead just reflects badly on you

Dear Miss Manners: My mother-in-law is very ill, and we have all been put on alert for her passing away. According to the doctors, it will happen in a few weeks. We are preparing mentally for this.

My mother-in-law and I have never been close or friendly. She has always said disparaging things about me to my face and behind my back.

Consequently, my inlaws have treated me as an outsider.

While not glad for her passing — and wanting to be supportive of my spouse — I don’t know how to respond when I will receive comments like “So sorry for your loss” or “She was such a good mother-in-law.” I’m not sorry to no longer have her in my life, and she was not a good mother-in-law.

Gentle reader: You should respond to condolences by saying “Thank you” and let pass any praise they may offer. They are not asking for a recital of your grievances. Miss Manners believes that you should also be aware that by doing otherwise — by what you think of as setting the record straight — the reputation you alter is likely to be your own.

Complaining about inlaws while they are alive may elicit some sympathy, but doing so instead of mourning is not likely to have that response. It will seem gratuitously mean — which is why there is a convention of not speaking ill of the dead — as well as callous toward your presumably grieving spouse.

People who feel they have known a better side of your mother-in-law will conclude that you were the problem.

Dear Miss Manners: When serving tea to guests, does one put in the milk and sugar first, or the tea? I understand that the historical reason for adding milk first (that the china would crack otherwise) is no longer applicable, and that some people are firm advocates of adding the milk second so that you can properly gauge the strength of the tea, but I am unsure what is required by etiquette.

Personally, I think that adding the milk first lends a certain elegance.

Additionally, should you stir the tea for the guest, or hand them their tea with the spoon resting on the saucer and allow them to stir it themselves?

Gentle reader: As you may be aware, the issue known as Milk In First (or Last) is highly emotionally charged, especially in England.

Miss Manners refuses to take sides in the chemistry arguments.

But if “elegance” is what you are after, whatever that means, she must tell you that certified snobs look down on the MIF folks.

Fortunately, there is no class angle to the question of stirring.

Anyone who drinks tea is presumed to be capable of stirring it.

Dear Miss Manners: My soon-to-be daughter-in-law has made a bridal registry. She has a 12-year-son from a prior relationship. Is it appropriate to add a soccer net to a registry?

Gentle reader: Evidently you have not noticed that Miss Manners does not believe that getting married — or graduating, or having a baby or any other milestone — is a license to beg. What you beg for does not make it more or less acceptable.

Dear Miss Manners: When do you stop being “divorced” and start being “single”? Gentle reader: Divorced people are also, by definition, single, as no remarried lady since Hamlet’s mother invented the paperless divorce has wondered if she was “married” or still “divorced.”

After decades in which people fought to reduce the nosiness of motor vehicle departments, employers and bores, their descendants are only too eager to label themselves with alarming specificity to anyone who will listen. Miss Manners attributes this to social media platforms that began, innocently enough, with the idea that one’s “status” should be as granular as “available,” “busy,” “away,” “at lunch” and so on — when she would have thought that “listening” and “not” covered all relevant possibilities.

Modern sensitivities notwithstanding, Miss Manners is willing to leave the choice between “divorced” and “single” up to the individual, so long as formerly married persons can agree not to use the latter until the former has been legalized.