Hello from the rock I have been living under for the month of January! Over the weekend, my friend Dan organized a pub crawl through Chinatown in honor of Chinese New Year (and his birthday). My 2014 has been off to a fairly tumultuous start, so I decided to embrace the commencement of the Year of the Horse as a new beginning. In order to move forward, I wanted to take a look back and remember my Mimi and Poppy, both of whom I lost in January. I usually love to write about fun adventures, suspenseful novels, and favorite spots in San Francisco, so thanks for indulging me as I get sentimental :).
My grandparents were married over 63 years ago in a small town in Oklahoma; Poppy was 19, Mimi, 17. Poppy had been orphaned twice before the age of 12, and turned to the U.S. Army as a source of camaraderie, family -- a sense of belonging. Just last night my boyfriend, Cam, was at a concert in San Francisco and I tossed and turned until he returned home in the early hours of Sunday morning. It's simply unfathomable to imagine a 17 year old girl (and I use "girl" deliberately) fostering and nurturing a relationship with someone whose location and well-being were so often unknown. While Poppy was the nurturer, the caregiver, in their later years, it was really Mimi who created the Thrasher family as I now know it, moving their four small children, including my mom, over twenty times throughout Poppy's career.
Throughout their speeches at Mimi's funeral, my mom and her siblings iterated a common theme: "Home was wherever Mom was." With each move, she packed up the furniture, photographs, paintings, and toys, and with each new house, established a new home. It was no matter that they would only be there for several months, or maybe a year or two, she kept a beautiful home and was always quick to entertain new friends, and encourage this outgoing nature in her children. Mimi would shelter her children from the loneliness of moving through fantastical lands and stories, whether it be reading to them or creating cups for fairies out of the tops of acorns. As I would later learn in my own childhood, being with Mimi was always safe. She was always quick to laugh and to make everyone feel comfortable.
Growing up, Poppy was intimidating: a military hero and the revered patriarch of my family. In a very roundabout way, Mimi's deteriorating health due to Alzheimer's was a blessing in that it enabled us to see Poppy in his truest form, and to see the rawness and realness of their love.
Poppy once told my mom that, "the first 50 years were mine, the last 50 will be hers." While they unfortunately didn't get the full fifty, his statement could not have been truer in the way he acted towards her in their final years. He would tie her shoes, feed her breakfast, change her soiled bedsheets and clothes, kiss her forehead, lift her in and out of bed, and, what I found to be the most profound --
talk to her. He didn't seem to notice or care that she didn't respond. Every card was still signed from both of them, whenever I called he would start each sentence with, "Mimi and I," even when it was clear that Mimi wasn't thinking or communicating much of anything. He was fiercely loyal and loved her with a vigor and authenticity that most only know to be the stuff of fairytales and Nicholas Sparks novels.
In 2012, Poppy was diagnosed with cancer, which slowly debilitated his ability to care for Mimi. This disability wore on him, but he never stopped fighting. Just months before his death, he underwent a colectomy and urostomy, a grueling 8-hour procedure, just with the hopes that it might restore some energy so that he could continue to be there for Mimi. He never uttered a word of complaint regarding his own disease; his concern stayed entirely on Mimi's comfort and happiness.
Mimi passed away on January 4, 2014. Poppy walked into the funeral home in his brand new suit and quietly began to cry. It pulled my heart in a direction I didn't know it could go, and yet I felt truly fortunate to witness firsthand what I think everyone really wants -- to find the one person who makes you whole, without whom you are broken.
Within days of Mimi's funeral, Poppy's cancer metastasized and he was told he had 3-4 days to live. It was shocking for everyone, including him, but he took the news with dignity and the knowledge that he would soon be reunited with the love of his life. I talked to him on the phone two days before his passing, and he told me that when you choose family first, always, you can never choose wrong. He told me how proud they (again, always "Mimi and I") were of me, and I told him that I was proud of him, too. I have always been, and will always be, so proud of the hardship and difficulties my grandparents overcame together. I will always be proud of their love story, and happy that I get to include their story in the narrative of my own life.
January was a month for mourning, but also a month to celebrate two of the best people I've ever known. Poppy always said, "Look up not down, look forward not backward." So here's to a new year of staying motivated, staying healthy, being kind, and always looking up and forward. I love you both forever; rest peacefully, and thank you for sharing your lives and love with us.
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