Mimi

It makes sense to start my first entry about my Grandma. I have been thinking about her a lot this week. I have known her all my life, and two weeks ago I stood at the foot of her grave site on the family plot, thinking just about how incredibly awesome my life was with her in it. I am grateful for so much about this woman and the relationship we shared. She really was one of my best friends, and although there is pain in losing her, my heart is full of gratitude for all of the experiences we had.

Every summer from about the time I was seven, I would go out to Tucson and stay with here. The first summer it was a week, and then gradually that expanded year after year until I stayed almost 6 weeks. Those summers were full of everything I ever wanted. We swam at least twice a day, we ate ice cream probably almost every day, we made strawberry shortcakes for dinner, we shopped and laughed, I learned to play tennis, I devoured Nancy Drew novels, I made art, helped her cook and do crossword puzzles. As soon as my plane landed, I was happy, and we were cruising all around Tucson and I would call the Catalina Mountains the "Cardboard Mountains" because they just looked too perfect to be real, more like a movie set. I hated to come home and I would be in mourning for days because I missed my grandma so much.

In her later years, she moved to Allen to be close to our family. For the last 10 years we have had some good times, this time mostly with me behind the wheel. One time I saved her life when I gave her the Heimlich at the Outback Steakhouse. She might have been grateful to me for saving her life, but I was grateful to her for enrolling us in CPR classes one summer when I was younger. It paid off

I am grateful she was present at all the milestones in my life: high school and college graduation, and when i earned my Master's. At 89 she traveled out to San Francisco to watch me get married. She made my wedding. I'll never forget that. I couldn’t wait to tell her that she was going to be a great-grandma and I will never forget the day that she held sweet Ruby in her arms. I thank God for the blessing that allowed those two lives to cross on this earth for nearly 5 months. Ruby was a welcome source of joy in the world that was slowly becoming too difficult to exist in.

Every day that goes by, I feel her presence. She is as real to me as the leaves on the trees and the ground at my feet. I believe she and I are twin souls. She went out at 92 and I was 29…the same age, but reserved. She might have called that synchronicity.