Mimi
My coffee meeting ended a few minutes early and I called my mom to tell her I’d meet her back at the house. I added about a dozen oatmeal raisin cookies to a ziploc, filled up my water bottle and snatched my sunglasses off the counter. I hopped in the truck and we made our way, as we are oft to do, with questions, laughter, silence and the kind of conversation that can only happen between a mother and her daughter.
We drove through McDonald's for a coffee with cream and sugar and an egg McMuffin, no cheese and no butter. We pulled up to Mimi’s house on Broadway Avenue bumping over the red brick road. Her black button down was tucked into her black slacks showing how thin she’d become but also how fit she’d remained. Her body still had the shape of a woman. The ironing board was out and a few blouses were strewn across her bed.
We hugged. She said she saw my daddy in me. This is something I never hear. I am my mother’s doppelganger but todayshe saw my dad in me and I thought, you know what, me too. I see him in me too.
We sat at the kitchen table and I told her about Stella and Eli. She asked about Josh’s job. Were we still married? I showed her pictures of everyone on my phone. After a while, she showed me through the house. She, like my mom and Sally, has curated a million things in this lifetime mirroring her story back to herself. Books on books on books on books. Framed pictures of her kids, grandkids, weddings, babies, graduations. Smiling back at us was four generations of life and love and sweet Baby Jesus. She started to tell about her dad being Cherokee Indian, my mom reminded me or maybe even her this was due to her grandaddy who probably had two families. As we turned the corner between her living room and the hallway to the bedroom, the reality of it all got caught right in my throat. Here at the end of her life, her mind bending to the reality of its brokenness, is her precious life. All of it.
All the good, hard, devastating and utterly glorious truth of who she is and the days she lived and still has to live matter. Legacy is 1,000 years behind us and 1,000 years in front of us and in this moment in time, I feel caught right in the middle which is the present which is the only way to live. This moment with her and my mother honoring this Life is the most important moment I’m living, whether she remembers it or not. It’s not in the Remembering; it’s in the Living.
We make our way to lunch and they put us in a booth at the corner of the restaurant. Her mood darkens until my mom tells the hostess we need to be by the window so she can see out. Again, I feel like I’m looking in a mirror. We order: myself a grilled chicken sandwich, my mom a meatloaf sandwich and Mimi the chicken quesadillas and I have to stop to take a picture once I realize we have each peeled the top layer of bread off of our respective meals.
I ask her what advice she has for me as woman in this season of life. She does not even pause before she looks back at me and says, “Hang in there.”
