If I were writing Mimi’s obituary

You need to know two facts to understand what I’m going to say next.

One: my sweet paternal grandmother died on Jan. 30, after a brief hospital stay with pneumonia and a subsequent stroke. Two: one of my regular freelance gigs is writing the alumni news pages (birth and wedding announcements, news of moves and job changes and awards, and yes, obituaries) for the alumni magazine of my alma mater and former employer.

I am, unquestionably, grieving Mimi’s death. I always wished we got to see her (and that whole side of the family) more often. My dad is the only one of her three sons who moved away, and so my branch of the family has always been the far-away cousins, the not-quite-strangers from Texas who came for a week every summer and for Thanksgiving or Christmas every few years. I am deeply glad we made the trek up there for Thanksgiving a couple of years ago, that my husband got to see what a Noah family holiday was like, all of us crowded into the warm living room or leaning against the counters in the chilly kitchen, sipping iced tea and snacking on leftovers from whatever big meal we’d just finished. I wish I had gotten to go to her memorial service, though everyone understood that I couldn’t make it, that it was too far away and too expensive and too much of a logistical nightmare.

There was a nice obituary in the Neosho Daily News, which resembles the obits I write for ACU Today: born on this date, in this place; grew up; graduated high school; went to college (or not); got married (or not); had children (or not); is survived by those children or grandchildren or a spouse or other relatives. In newspapers and alumni magazines, that’s usually all we have time and space for. And I’m grateful to whoever wrote Mimi’s obituary. They got all the facts right and mentioned a few details, like her 27 years working for the school district and her love of teacups and her attendance at many basketball games through the years.

But if I were writing Mimi’s obituary, I would tell you this:

She had blue eyes as clear as the summer sky, and yet rainy days were her favorite weather. (The morning of her funeral dawned cloudy and gray; it started to rain that afternoon as they scattered her ashes at the farm, and it poured, my mom said, all night long.) She loved antiques and iced tea and costume jewelry, and she had narrow, pretty feet, and a whole closet full of shoes.

She got nervous and fluttery when guests came over, and yet a houseful of people was her favorite thing – kids and grandkids swirling around each other in the kitchen and living room, playing pool or Ping-Pong in the basement (that was stocked with enough canned goods to feed the whole town in the event of a nuclear blast), shooting hoops on the ragged basketball court in the side yard. She jumped from one topic to another in conversation, sometimes leaving half a dozen sentences unfinished in a row. It could be exhausting to try to follow her, but it also made me laugh.

She worked at the local high school when my dad and his brothers went there, and they walked through the office door calling “Hey, Mom!” so often that her nickname became “the Hey Mom.” She loved long road trips with my grandfather, taking their time poking through little towns, always coming home with a stack of vintage tins or linens or delicate teacups, or anything related to the Sunshine Biscuit company, where her father used to work.

She was Midwestern thrifty and Lutheran faithful, and before every meal she and Papaw would join hands, bow heads and repeat the simple prayer, “Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest, and let this food to us be blessed. Amen.” They distributed sacks of candy and fruit to needy kids every Christmas, and then came back to the farm to watch their own kids and grandkids open presents and dig into their stockings, which always included a little jar of black olives and a box of Cracker Jack.

She believed in thank-you notes and birthday checks, in reusing what you could and saving what you couldn’t. She hung her walls with faded family photographs and plate racks, and paintings done by her sister. She loved her three sons and six grandkids and three great-grandkids with a fierce but quiet love, and every day I ever spent at her house began with the teasing question, “Did you sleep with your eyes closed?” and ended with “Good night, sleep tight. Don’t let the bedbugs bite you!”

She was scatterbrained and funny, exasperating and lovable. She had a long, full life (a cliche, but it’s true) and I am thankful she didn’t suffer long. (She walked with my grandfather through his three-year illness and oh, we are thankful she didn’t have to go through that again.) She is in a better place, I know (again a cliche, but it’s a deep-down, beyond-words kind of knowing). I will see her again someday (this I know, too, with the same kind of knowing that falters in cliches because we don’t have the words to say what we really mean). But she was my Mimi, and I will – I already do – miss her.