The Heart of the Family

Last Friday was a very important day. It was the birthday of the strongest woman I've ever known. 

My grandmother has quite a normal life story. Grew up in the 40s in a poor household, married to one man, two kids, six grand daughters, four great grand boys. But the numbers don't say anything of the stubborn strength and patience that she pushed into everything she did. She taught me to read by getting me to sit with her while she read Calvin and Hobbes comics to me. She gave my my first novel and later, my first Shakespeare play. She had far too much patience with me, babied me when I was sick, and covered for me with my parents when I was out at punk rock shows when I was 15. 

She's had several different kinds of cancer, the latest of which (a brain tumor) will kill her one day. But that is what the doctors told us almost ten years ago. They also told us that she had less than a week to live. She saw another birthday today in pure defiance of what those doctors said. 

In our own way, every member of my family has been preparing to lose my grandmother for near a decade. These days Mimi doesn't have very many days where she is active or cognoscent of her surroundings. But the days she does, she smiles, and gives my mother or the nurses at the home a hard time. She is still Mimi sometimes. 

For my part I have been dealing with this the way I deal with every death I've seen in my relatively short life. I've been angry and told myself it won't happen. I've put the thoughts of losing my grandmother into a box in my head and locked it up tight. It's too painful, and in matters of loss I am very much a child. 

I've watched how these thoughts have taken their toll on my family. How they've broken hearts and caused fights. Mimi wouldn't want this, but none of us have really discussed it with her. The few times I've talked to her about her death she has remained hopeful and faithful to a fault. She believes she is bound for a better place and a long awaited reunion with my grandfather. I hope she's right, but without her faith to fall back on I've put that conversation in the box with everything else. 

I'm not in despair though. When I start to get angry or sad that I didn't get enough time with her or that my children won't know her like my nephews do, I pick up a book and I always read the first sentance to myself in her voice. 

I love you, Mimi. Happy birthday.