Mimi with Asher last spring.
My sweet Grandmother fell ill this week. I haven't posted about it, because it has been really hard on me. Her real name is Muriel Bland Pace Newcomb. She goes by the name "Mimi" and has been called that her entire life. I remember her telling someone over the phone once how to spell it, she said,"M-I-M-I" and it is a great irony and something that I love that my kids call my mom "RiRi" or "R-I-R-I".
She has been a woman that I have admired and loved fiercefully my whole life. She was a licensed pilot at the age of 16. She was a revolutionary...women had only received the right to vote two years before she was born. And here she was flying! She was married to my grandfather (who was a pilot in WWII) and had children during the babyboom. She has a fiery personality and is always fun to talk to. She has been an avid reader my entire life, when she began to lose her eyesight to do macular degeneration, her inability to read was the biggest loss.
We would live with my grandparents in between moves and during summers when we would return to the states. Their property called "Chickasaw", has the allure of Narnia to me. They have a 1/4 mile long driveway through heavy woods, with Spanish moss hanging from the branches. When you hit the driveway at 300 Lovers Lane, you just feel peace wash over your soul. I always felt like it was "home" whenever we arrived.
Mimi would make me poundcake and cinnamon toast for breakfast. Each were made in her own special way, not in the toaster-but the oven!. I would wake up late and she would stop whatever it was that she was doing to make this special treat for me. And then she would sit and the table and talk to me. It was such a sweet time.
Their house was better than anywhere else that my parents could have taken us. They lived on the water and had a beach front on a lake. We would swim all day, water ski, tube, play, capture frogs and lizards and have more adventures than you could imagine. It truly does feel like a magical place for a child!
Well Mimi became ill earlier this week. She was admitted to the hospital on Thursday with dehydration, pneumonia and other complications. Last night, my mom noticed that her legs turned purple. My mom went to get a doctor and after they returned, the doctor was talking to Mimi and she seized up and stop breathing. The doctor put an oxygen mask on Mimi and she was able to resume breathing on her own. My mom noticed that her legs color had returned to pink and they assumed that a blood clot had traveled through her system. This is not a good thing. Blood clots go to one of three places; the brain, the heart or the lungs.
They called their priest and he administered last rites. My dad started calling me, my brother and my sister. They told us that she wasn't expected to make it through the night.
I was so sad. I cried for a long time and then I started looking for pictures, letters, anything that I had that could remind me of her. I found a stack of letters that she wrote to me in college. I started writing both of my grandmothers my junior year of college asking their advice on life issues. It was so sweet to reread and remember her before she lost her eyesight, hearing and some of her memory.
Then this morning I called my mom and she said that was slightly responding to my mom's voice, but it still didn't look good even though she made it through the night.
About an hour later, my mom called and said that she left the hospital to go home for a shower and to eat something. When she returned to the hospital, Mimi was sitting up and talking! She spent the rest of the day entertaining family members in the ICU. The doctors and staff are mystified over this turn of events (as are we!).
Mimi is still in poor health and has a long road to battle the pneumonia and other complications. But for today, I got to talk to my grandmother and tell her that I love her. I hope I get to say it again tomorrow.
