She made it.
You can be practically any faith & those three words cover it. Not sadness, not regret - she made it.
From my birth to her death, Mim & I had a complicated relationship. It was a comfort on many levels that we'd gotten to a post office relationship, exchanging cards, notes, short letters. Never anything about present day, always something rooted in the past. That was where Mim was at ease. And it came to be okay with me.
Nothing exemplified Mim more to me than her "Squirrels for peace" card. How she found these things I never could figure out - she had a gift for drawing the just-right whatever to her. The drawing is so us & so her - will treasure it forever.
We didn't talk on the phone, because it was inevitable that something I'd say would bug her. It wasn't personal, it was personality, it was rabidly clashing communication styles. Once I came to that awareness, it was possible to partner fashioning a relationship that worked. Finally moved past what I wanted to be to what actually was. And it would never have worked without her being just as willing to let things slide.
I think that Mim would have passed 25 minutes before we arrived at the hospital no matter what time we headed over. She in left the utter calm of a close friend, without a smidgen of family baggage.
Through all the years ahead, will always remember how young she looked, not just yesterday, but the Friday before when we all were joshing & kidding around, Mim being Mim. She looked in her early 30s, not 70s.
On this Indepedence Day, am sending a special shout-out to my big sister - "You made it." In your time, in your setting, in your way - with your hand on a teddy bear. Rock on!
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