reader's discretion advised - failing Mim

When people offer me their condolences on Mim's passing, I usually respond, "Not so - there should be dancing in the streets!"  My sister might have lived a highly meaningful life, she might have touched others in ways that changed & uplifted their existence, but the fact is that Mim struggled with the mechanics of living.  She shared numerous times the sense that she wasn't cut out for what most people experience as happiness.  

Mim accomplished astonishing things over her lifetime, but in the end the golden moments of her life turned to lead, dulled by her most steadfast of all beliefs - that other people didn't believe her capable of doing anything.  Two weeks ago, my brother warned me I might want to rethink doing something special as a thank you for the place where she recently lived.  "They weren't nice to her," he explained.  "They didn't care about her at all.  In fact, she believed they wouldn't even notice if she died."

It didn't matter what Mim had accomplished over her life.  They couldn't hold a candle to her all-consuming lack of faith in herself.  

I know that the people in the place where she lived felt toward Mim as most people touched by her felt - almost an awe at her inner light, a reverence of her clear intelligence, a wonder at her ability to put simple truths into words that resonated in the mind & heart.  Other people who had personal contact with the staff confirm that was their experience, too - that a wide range of personnel had shared comments, insights or stories that could only have been gleaned through close, caring connection with Mim.

It didn't dawn on Peter that Mim could - very possibly - have tarred him with the same "they don't believe in me" brush.  When she told a counselor, "My family doesn't think I can do anything," she didn't include the caveat, "except Peter."  As she described it, NONE of us did.

Some people have wondered if Mim portrayed others as putting her down, holding her down, in order to get sympathy.  That would make it less heartbreaking, an intentional angling for support while casting others in an unimaginably bad light.   It's a lot easier to go with that than to think that she absolutely positively categorically could not accept her remarkable qualities as something special, worthwhile, priceless.

This wasn't a new attitude of Mim's.  As her considerably younger sister, there isn't a time I can recall when Mim didn't trash herself.  What horrified me more than Mim's inability to see her best & brightest qualities was the total lack of interest in those closest to her to at least try to help her out of her dark abyss.

That is something I'll never understand.  No one in our family appeared to have the slightest interest in helping Mim.  To a person, they seemed stunned I'd even consider there might be a problem.

Once, in the early 1990s, I tried to get buy-in from family members for a professionally facilitated sit-down with Mim.  My attempts were shut down ~and~ I was informed Mim was fine, that the one with problems was me.  My s-i-l literally spelled it out - I was the most psychotic person she'd ever encountered. 

Being me, I immediately looked up psychotic & discovered that one definition is "abnormal social behavior."  In that, my s-i-l was utterly spot on - in our family, my let's-get-it-out-in-the-open approach was absolutely abnormal!  

One of the strongest responses I've had to Mim's passing is the sense of letting her down.  Mim seemed to bring out that sense in people - so many have shared with me over the past few weeks a regret that they didn't do more to make a difference.  

Days after Mim's death, I consoled a high school classmate who called from out of state to share his regret at not having done more.  This kind grandfather felt somehow less a person - 50+ years after their graduation  - for having "failed" her back then.  I thanked him for doing all he had, shared with him the possibility that maybe nothing could have helped Mim see herself in a healthy light.  

Three weeks out, am finding that I relate more & more to his feelings, to a sense of having failed Mim by not doing SOMETHING that might have helped her see the high regard she was held in by the nursing home staff, the admiring opinions of countless others over the years, the deep love so many feel for her, the envy her baby sister will always have for her keen intelligence & questing mind...

I consoled Mim's classmate with the fact that he cared enough to have seen the loneliness she held inside herself & a desire to lighten it.  Those multiple calls from him & my consolation will help strengthen my own sense of having fallen so far short with her.  Will remind myself of what I shared with her grieving classmate - maybe there was nothing any of us could have done that would have gotten through her high deep wide defenses.  Yes, I failed, but at least I tried.