I will never lie to you an say that I didn’t wish for more time, but that doesn’t mean I’m not grateful for what I received.
My father’s parents lived only thirty minutes’ drive from our house when I was a child. We called them Mimi and Pap because that’s what I named them, and I was the oldest grandchild. I don’t remember it, but for the first year of my life when my mother was still working, my grandmother watched me. Her factory had closed during Mom’s pregnancy, and Mimi didn’t go back to work so that she could be with me. I have vague memories of helping my grandfather lace his boots for work, but he was also retired by the time I was five years old.
It’s hard to summarize over twenty-five years of love. Pap taught me to color and read to me. Mimi drove me to nursery school and took me to lunch afterward. They went to my school plays and concerts. They burst with pride when I graduated from high school and college with honors.
They were always there. Weekends, holidays, and for me summer and winter breaks in college. My grandmother and I talked on the phone every week that I wasn’t there. Pap passed away first, in January of 2006. Mimi was really lonely in those last months, her first time living alone in her entire life. She died just two weeks before Thanksgiving from surgical complications.
They taught me the meaning of words like family and love and Thanksgiving.
A Grave Concern 