As September 16 passes each year, I think not only of football game days and how temperatures less than 90 degrees are tantalizingly close to reality, but also of my late grandmother, Dorothy Parker Fischette. September 16 was her birthday, and this year she would have been 81 years old. And if she knew I was announcing her age to the general public, she’d whack me on the back of the head.
Dorothy, or Dot to friends, or Mimi to grandchildren, was one of a kind. She was puzzingly short, coming in at 5’2” (when she fibbed). She was impeccably stylish, never missing the opportunity for a trip to the hair dresser or a sale at Jacobsen’s. She gave both of her sons names that began with the letter “C”, probably so she could call them either name and have it be close. She made us laugh constantly, all the time. Sometimes it was at her, but it was always with her.
Mimi was no stranger to hardship. She and her five children lost my paternal grandfather, Earl Warren Parker, to cancer when she was in her thirties. Her second husband, Stumpy, was taken from this world in a tragic shooting range accident. She sat through numerous heart bypass operations with the grandfather I knew, Jim Fischette. Her kids knew these hardships as well; remembering at times very different versions of my always-doting Mimi that I could never do justice describing.
But we can all agree that she was the sun in our skies for better or worse. She spent much of her time volunteering as the area president of the American Cancer Society and establishing the major fundraiser, the Cowford Ball. She took us in when we were sad, she kept us overnight when it snowed in 1989 and the roads were too icy to go home, and she made our family Christmas Eve celebrations enviable by any standard.
As I read freshman essays for work, I can’t help but remember the very last thing Mimi said to me before she died. I was going off to college at the University of Florida and had gone to visit her at her house. As I was backing out of the driveway, she motioned for me to roll down the window of the Cherry Bomb, our dependable Toyota Corolla. She looked straight at me, in her voice of a cross between Scarlett O’Hara and Blanche Devereaux , and said; Now Lindsey, when you go off to college, don’t you do cocaine.”
Eight years later, Mimi… We still miss you and you still make us laugh. Thank you for sharing your life with us.
This is the best thing I’ve read in a long, long time. Thanks Lindsey! And did you follow her advice????