Mimi

There are common phrases that you use, but never really understand them until you have truly experienced them in your own life.

When it rains, it pours
Bad things happen in threes
Everything happens for a reason

It is with great sadness that I now understand these common phrases more closely than most of the people I know.

After the death of my grandfather in January I thought that this would be a hard spring. Earlier this month my mother fell hiking and broke her leg and I knew this would be a difficult summer. Last week I was informed that my Mimi had passed away in the night.
This is going to be a tough year.

When it rains, it pours
Bad things happen in threes
Everything happens for a reason

Unlike my complex and confusing relationship with my late grandfather, I knew Mimi like the back of my hand. She was true family and easily one of the classiest people I’ve ever met. My first memory of her unique air of status was when I learned her name. Mimi was only the pet name that she let her grandchildren (my cousin, my younger sister, and myself) call her because as she bluntly put it: “The word grandmother makes me seem so old!” She could have chosen to be a granny or a nana, but none of these terms of endearment would really encompass all that she was. I always thought that she was just Mimi—like Madonna or Cher—but when I was about eight years old, I asked my dad why Mimi’s cards always were sent to a woman named Barbara Pennick. He explained the whole double names thing and it promptly blew my tiny mind. Only Barbara Pennick could be one of the greatest grandmothers of all time without even actually being a grandmother by title.

Vain genius with good intentions.

It was this vain genius that continued to entertain and impress me throughout the 21 years that Mimi was physically in my life. When she would visit us in California (always in the spring or summer months to make sure she got only the best weather), she would sit by our pool with a vodka tonic vowing that someday this would be her entire life. I loved being her vacation. It made me feel special. Even after she made her face up, she would still dare to get in the pool with the splashing machines that took over my sister and I whenever we touched water. Gliding effortlessly around the pool with the help of a kickboard Mimi would never get her hair wet. I never understood how she did it, but I guess I never tried hard enough.

How could I not look up to a woman who made everything look so graceful and cool? I didn’t even mind that she smoked that much because the smell of her cigarette smoke mixed with Chanel No. 5 was so inviting, so natural for her personality. She was my definition of New England royalty and always played the part so beautifully.

During my last days with Mimi this past March I learned more about who Barbara Pennick was. Barbara Pennick was a dedicated single mother of three beautiful children, the eldest being my father. Her life was not always full of Chanel No.5 and pool side lounging. As a Catholic mother trying to take care of her kids, “no meat Fridays” and hiding from the paper boy on collection days were regular occurrences. Sitting around a table drinking wine, these stories were full of hilarious embellishments and the rose tint that often comes with looking at your life through the rear view mirror. I thought about these stories I had heard over and over at dinner tables throughout my life as casual chatter and realized how hard Mimi had it. It was at this moment that she became not only one of the most beautiful women that I have ever had the pleasure of knowing, but also one of the strongest.

Everything happens for a reason

There is something special in the fact that my grandfather died first because it gave me the gift of being able to see Mimi one last time. I don’t take it lightly and I thank him from the bottom of my heart because I am completely satisfied with my relationship with Mimi right up to the moment that I drove away from her to Logan airport. People continue to send their condolences to me because of how much death I’ve had to deal with this year, but they shouldn’t. It happened on a perfect schedule all thanks to Joseph.

Now I know that Mimi would be upset that I spent some of my writing about her on her ex husband especially considering they had been divorced for over 40 years, so let’s salute the woman who taught my father how to dress, and a family how to stick together.

To the woman who thought Talbots was an acceptable gift for a 13 year old girl!
To the woman who once said “She doesn’t know I don’t like her!”
To the woman who made me listen to Frank Sinatra when I only wanted to listen to the Spice Girls.
To the woman that sent me cards in college for no occasion at all.
To the woman who always believed in me.

To Mimi.