She works for housekeeping, and looks vaguely Hispanic and way younger than however old she’s about to tell me she is, and while I want to sit in my father’s room and read his Wall Street Journal, she wants to talk. She says, “Hi, Michael,” though we’ve never met and I say hi back. As she cleans she floats through the room and judging by her smile I know there is no hiding. <\/p>\n
“Peter told me your name. It is Michael isn’t it?”<\/p>\n
“Yep.”<\/p>\n
“Peter’s a lovable guy. The woman who trained me twenty-seven years ago, and who has since died talked about a friend of hers she called one neat dude. And Peter is one neat dude.”<\/p>\n
‘Who doesn’t know when to shut up.”<\/p>\n
“And neither do I.”<\/p>\n
“And who are you?”<\/p>\n
“My name’s Mimi.”<\/p>\n
“M-i-m-i?”<\/p>\n
“Yes. Most people don’t know how to spell it.”<\/p>\n
“They don’t remember Mimi Rogers?”<\/p>\n
“They spell it M-e-m-e, like it sounds. Or M-e-m-i. My mother-in-law spells is M-e-m-i-e and pronounces it that way.”<\/p>\n
“You must love that.”<\/p>\n
“Thirty-one years now. She’ll send me a Christmas card addressed to Memie and I’ll write back Mimi but it doesn’t matter.”<\/p>\n
“My sister spells my name M-i-c-h-e-a-l and always has. Do you work full time?”<\/p>\n
“I do now. I used to worked full time and then went to part time to take help take care of my grandkids, but my husband got sick.”<\/p>\n
Donna, Mack’s nurse enters and Mimi moves to the other side of the room.<\/p>\n
“What kind of sick?” I ask.<\/p>\n
As if it were some kind of private conversation we were having, Mimi mouths the word cancer and makes a “C” with her left hand.<\/p>\n
When Donna leaves Mimi asks me if I understood her sign language.<\/p>\n
It remind me of the old, old days when doctors didn’t tell patients they were dying and cancer was referred to as The Big “C.” Now everyone tells everyone everything and it feels like illness is more about preparing to die than getting better. <\/p>\n
Mimi tells me her husband is having radiation and chemo and that he’s fifty-four and that he’s going to die. Her expression doesn’t change a bit. Light and lively to the end.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
She works for housekeeping, and looks vaguely Hispanic and way younger than however old she’s about to tell me she is, and while I want to sit in my father’s room and read his Wall Street Journal, she wants to … Continue reading