Happy Birthday Mimi

This afternoon we will be taking a drive to visit with Sam's mother. We will find her, under the stately oak tree, that holds on to the small sweet whistling wind chime. We will attentively listen to it as the dry air swoops it up and takes my tears with it, too. We will be sitting on the grass and again, asking the old-age question that we never seem to get an answer for " why aren't you with us today?". I will sob through all the sweet memories of Mimi and get upset that Isabela did not get to meet her. But, in the end, I will walk away from her cemetery plot and hang on to those smiles and jokes she always seem to be generous with.

Wow, how I love that woman...

I can't write anymore. It's too painful for me. It's been 11 years, but my chest still pounds. Last year, I did write something (on a different blog), after a few glasses of wine. Really. Here it goes..

Posted Nov 11, 2007 2:07am
It's really early in the morning this Sunday morning, but I had to write to you all about someone I have never really mentioned. There is a great significance today for me. You always hear me mention Isabela’s grandmother, my mom, but I have never really mentioned her other grandmother. “Mimi” was what her kids called her, what Sammy called her, what I called her. Aside from my mother, she was THE greatest woman I have ever met and loved. I was fortunate to have had such a wonderful mother-in-law in my life, I will never understand why I never got to enjoy her for so many more years. The day she left us, was one of my all-time, greatest pains.
Today is special to me because of something that I never even told Sammy about. Mimi was in a coma for two weeks after respiratory arrest. I actually believed she would come out of it. I remember talking to her and telling her I wanted to marry her son. I remember talking to her and telling her how much I loved Sunday night dinners at her house. But, today, I especially remember telling her with great excitement how Barbra Streisand’s new album had come out – Higher Ground. On that Tuesday, ten years ago today, I got the CD and played it for her in her room. I really believed that she would wake up and smile and that the awful nightmare would be over because her heart got a dose of Barbra. I saw the end of sleeping in the St. Joseph Hospital waiting room for all of us. You see, she and I had that in common, we so loved Barbra. We always talked about her movies and especially the most recent at that time, The Mirror Has Two Faces. We were captivated by her. However, with the boombox sitting next to her and Barbra extending her melodies, she never woke up. That is one marked day of my life in which I was truly disappointed.
She left his world, but I always look for her, especially in Isabela. I love to say that Isabela is “petite” because her grandmother was. If Isabela is half of the woman I saw with my own eyes, I will be so pleased. Although, I miss her terribly, every single day that Isabela was in the ICU, I thanked God for Mimi not being with us. If her illness wouldn’t have taken her, the pain of seeing her granddaughter suffering would have. That was her, her life was her family.
We so love you still, Mimi….


Barbara Streisand photo in the 1960's. I don't have one of Mimi in digital format (not yet), we bought our first digital camera in 1998, the year after she passed.