I can offer sympathies but I'm not sure how to respond to an awful mother instead of a wifebeating father, take a cue from spiders and ride around on her back before eating her maybe? No, that wouldn't work, you're probably too large to ride around like that...
That makes me feel weird. On the one hand, the arachnophobe inside me is screaming and cheering at the same time. On the other hand, people were squicked out when I said my pet rat had died, so I feel sorry for your loss.
Rats are adorable little buddies, and I am totally sorry to hear about that too. There isn't much that actually triggers a "yeeuch" reaction from me besides cockroaches after having a house get infested due to someone bringing over a large soup pot and lid for something, opening it, and kinda chuckling when a couple of little roaches came out. "Ha ha, whoops." Yeah, whoops, thanks a lot. I still freak out if I see a little black dot on food that I didn't expect to be there. We got rid of the fuckers finally but yeah, those'll trigger the "fuck it, pass me the flamethrower" response in me.
I was able to get her in an improvised mount so it looks like she's just walking around instead of curled up in an undignified and permanent cringe, arachnophobes look elsewhere:
http://imgur.com/gallery/74b5Z but if you are interested in perhaps looking at our little spiderbros differently there are links to the various albums I had of Val and our porch spiders last year.
Mother-in-law was bummed out for me, and herself I think, as she's gotten used to having a spider there in the summer now, but these things happen. It's the main reason I was always excited and nervous when I needed to relocate her web. Rather than have it get walked into accidentally I just used a great big rake to scoop it up so the center remains taut and she doesn't freak out, then I can set the rake down flat and encourage her to scoot off the side and just let her walk up onto my hand for pictures and such.
It's really fun handling them, you can feel them tiptoe around and wobble a bit like a little old lady with a walker. Just like all little old ladies these gals like to hang out on the porch, weave, and eat flies. Though of course you have to be careful when picking them up, not because they'll bite you, well, some little old ladies might, but the spiders wouldn't... no, you have to be careful to not let them fall, and this morning is why.
Glad she didn't fall from me handling her, but man that sucks.