Amazing Grace

Adelaide and I share a middle name: Grace. It was my paternal grandmother, my Mimi’s, maiden name. When others were embarrassed or indifferent about their middle names, I shared mine with pride. It’s pretty, sounds good with my first name, and established a formative bond with my Mimi: who is pretty high on my list of favorite people.

Grace. While I’ve owned and loved the name, I’ve never truly felt like I embodied the word. If I had a dollar for every time someone suggested, I give myself some grace… I would have a lot of dollars. The Oxford English Dictionary defines grace first as a “simple elegance or refinement of movement”. I quit taking dance classes when I was seven because I specifically did NOT have “refinement of movement”. As for temperament? Even as a child I was emotional, opinionated, and loud - none of which are found on a list of grace synonyms. Grace is my middle name! I feel like that should get me a leg up on the being, giving and getting of grace! Not so, my friends, not so.

Back to my Mimi, who I remember for her warmth, patience, and the mischievous twinkle in her eye – and I don’t mean that symbolically, I actually remember them twinkling. She lived in St. Louis and I grew up a seven-hour car drive away in Omaha, so I didn’t get to see her regularly, but the several times a year I did were pure magic. She was a preschool teacher and would take me to her classroom where they had easels with giant paper pads and paint, and I would spend the morning creating masterpieces. Back at her house we would color, play games and she would read to me.

I can connect many of my obsessions or favorites to her: she sent me a postcard from a trip she made to Hawaii. It had a mother and baby humpback whale on the front and from that moment on I was obsessed with whales, specifically humpbacks. For Christmas one year, she gave my brother and me stuffed elephants - mine has been stitched together more time than I can count and came with me to college. Just outside her bedroom, at the landing at the top of the stairs, she had collected all the stuffed animals from A.A. Milne’s Hundred Acre Wood – even Owl and Kanga with a little Roo in her pouch. For years I thought I would decorate my first baby’s nursery with a Winnie the Pooh theme (I didn’t, Jackson had trains instead). Still, Winnie the Pooh, holds a special place in my heart.

Mimi passed away from cancer when I was in fourth grade. My world was rocked by my first taste of grief. I remember my mom coming into my room as I was waking for the day to tell me she had died. I remember that the funeral was the week before my birthday and proudly telling anyone that asked me my age that my birthday was only days away. I remember sobbing while the overflowing church sang Amazing Grace at the funeral. I also remember sitting in our school counselor’s dimly lit office talking about my feelings around Mimi’s passing months later.

I would come to learn when I was older that Mimi didn’t just enchant children, she was also the life of the party and charmed most adults she met. She loved bourbon, a good night out with friends, and to laugh. She also suffered from depression, an early lesson that people are not always as well as they seem. I would give almost anything to get to know her as the woman I am today.

When I think of ‘grace’, the embodiment of grace, the giving of grace, amazing grace - she is who comes to mind. A fiery spirit that moved through the world with kindness, empathy, and love. That is the kind of ‘refinement of movement’ I aim for now. As for giving myself grace… let’s just say I’m a work in progress.

Writing this piece and remembering her still brings tears to my eyes thirty years later. Thirty years and I still miss my Mimi, I still get emotional thinking about her. Whoever said time heals all wounds had clearly never lost someone they loved deeply. Because once we are touched by grief it never truly leaves us. Nor do we want it to.

This has been important for me to acknowledge as the four-year anniversary of Adelaide’s death is looming two months ahead of me. This anniversary will mark her being gone from us longer than she was with us and I’ve been practicing some serious emotional processing procrastination. So, in the meantime, I’m choosing to imagine that even though they never met on Earth, that Mimi welcomed Adelaide in death with open arms, a Winnie the Pooh stuffed animal, and some really good stories.

Written in loving memory of Ann (Grace) Martin and Adelaide Grace Cervantes

Image description: Mimi’s short, dark hair is pulled back in a bandana. She is smiling, wearing glasses and a dark tank top. A four or five year Kelly is sitting in her lap with an open-mouthed toothy smily. She has a blonde bob haircut, sunburned cheeks and is wearing a red and white striped shirt.