Missing Missy

From the day she was born, my parents knew their first daughter had an independent streak a mile wide - they named her Joann K Lockhart.  Yep - just the single letter, K.  Dad wanted to call her Katharine or Kay, after Mom, but she would have none of it.  They arrived at an unusual - but so perfectly Mim - compromise ~ give her the single letter K & let her decide what she wanted it to be.  

 Missy ~ Mimmy ~ Mim 

(Joann Kiernan Lockhart)

It really didn't matter much, because she was called Missy - later Mimmy, then finally Mim - from the time she was born.  The maternity nurses called her "little Missy," a name that stuck.  I only recall Mom & Dad calling her Missy, but there are lots of friends who were close to her in the 1950s & early 1960s who still call her Mimmy.

It took Mim almost forty years, but she finally did come up with what she wanted that single K to stand for - is it her Bachelors from NYU or her MSW from Rutgers that proudly proclaims JOANN KIERNAN LOCKHART?

My sister always walked her own path.  Sometimes it included others, often it was just Mim.  

I am forever grateful that she was not alone when she slipped from the surly bonds of earth this past Friday, 25 minutes before my brother, my husband & I arrived at the hospital.  We thought she was just sleeping.  Her hand on a teddy bear.

We never got to fill out the Final Wishes form I'd brought, but it would have been moot, anyhow.  A friend of hers has power of attorney & I have no idea what was done with my sister's remains.  Hoping she got her wish of leaving it to scientific research, as our mother did, as I will.  Whatever happened to it, both my sister & I - like our parents before us - saw our earthly remains as a glove that's outlived its purpose.

But a lot of people don't have that attitude.  A lot of people would be torn up with grief & even guilt that they didn't know what their loved one wanted done with their remains, or who had responsibility for that decision.  Don't leave it until it's too late.  We lucked out.  Most people wouldn't.

I am missing Missy.  Where her remains are, I have no idea.  Where her spirit is - that's the more interesting ponder, isn't it?!