I Know, I Know

I’ve been away for too long. You must forgive me, Dear Reader, for I have been a camera department intern on an indie feature being shot out here in Los Angeles. Since the gig was non-union, we were regularly worked for 14 hours a day and that gave me only so much time to come home, stare at an episode of “South Park” with an exhausted look on my face, then fall over onto the ground. Ten hours later, I’d be right back on set. It was pretty grueling, but also one of the most informative and useful experiences of my life. In a lot of ways, it was my first real “set,” my first experience having a real job to do on a professional gig.

Some of you may know that my grandmother, whom we affectionately call Mimi, passed recently, and I’ll be flying out to Texas for the funeral. Mimi was a wonderful woman and I’ll miss her always, but I must confess I feel a lot of gratitude to the Lord for the way she went out, which was incredibly peacefully. She lived a rich and happy life, then departed with a gentle whisper from this world, and if there’s nothing we can do about death then I wouldn’t have it any other way. Really, my biggest problem with the situation is that people have to die at all.

I must admit, my memories of Mimi are harder to trace and pin down than her husband’s (we called him Boo), who passed a little while back. Boo was a storyteller, a magnetic presence in a room, he’s probably the origin of my love of public speaking. Mimi, in my experience, left a much more careful impression, she was never really interested in being the center of the room. This is weird for me, of course, because my entire immediate family right down to Jacob and Natalie are lovers of attention, happy to take center stage. The only person who can probably relate to Mimi’s take is Corelyn, who often finds herself sitting quietly at our family gatherings, terrified by this gaggle of type-A personalities wrestling for control of the conversation. Even though Cor never got to know Mimi, I think the two of them would have understood each other well.

Through being married to Corelyn, I’ve come to believe I appreciate Mimi more. As a kid it was easy to love her, because like any good grandparent she spoiled me, but I doubt that at that age I really appreciated her. I don’t think I understood how many things would fall apart if Mimi wasn’t there. I don’t think I comprehended how much of what I took for granted literally depended on Mimi. We would have these massive family gatherings, and I would just assume they chugged along on some magical family power; that meals just found their way to tables, events just planned themselves, communication between everyone just happened. I would hear stories about my father growing up, and I never thought about who made those precious family times happen, who organized the vacations, who laid the blueprints of behavior that would be emulated in my own upbringing. Now I’m beginning to realize that Mimi had long been the engine of the Allen family, the driving force that pushed it forward. I associate the Allen family with a lot of things, and most of them were forged into being by my grandmother. She set the tone for how we would behave around others and amongst one another, what would define us as Christians, and how we would go about raising families of our own. Everything I know about my family is rooted in her influence.

My clearest memory of her is from the last time I saw Boo, at a visit to our house in Alexandria. We knew that Boo had been fading, and Dad warned me that when I went in to see him, he might not remember who I was. Honestly, it was a little like ol’ Boo was holding court, you would visit him in the side porch basically one at a time. When I went in, it was ostensibly to see him, but the person I really spoke to was Mimi, because her mind was at 100 percent, and his was somewhat less than that. As soon as I sat down, she smiled warmly at me and turned to her husband, spoke maybe three words, and his eyes lit up: “Well, hello there Andrew!” I quickly learned to direct my conversation entirely at her, even if my question was for Boo. I ran out of things to say very fast, and felt quite awkward, but Mimi wouldn’t let off the hook for one second, she kept drilling me with “what’s going on with…” and “tell me about…” Every time I would answer, I could see that Boo was struggling a little bit, so Mimi would turn and rephrase my sentences, sometimes only minute little changes, and he would get it instantly. I couldn’t understand why he understood her and not me.

The reason that memory is so vivid is because it was so unlike Mimi to be so forceful in a conversation, to propel the thing forward relentlessly like that. She had always been a gentle personality, the kind that would let you drift away whenver you felt like it, but now she was unstoppable. Looking back on it, I realize that Mimi was just being herself. It was necessary for her to be like that, so we could all have one last family gathering, and so that’s what she did. Whatever the difference was between reality and what we all wanted, it was my grandmother who would build the bridge to cross it. I can’t even imagine the kind of work she went through to get herself and her husband on an airplane to come visit us, and once they had arrived, she was the only way we could talk to him as if no time had passed. She made it possible for us to all be together.

I don’t really have much else I’d like to say on the subject. Bye, Mimi. I love you.