Who is Mimi and Why Write About Her?

Mimi was my maternal grandmother. I should say, rather, that she still is my maternal grandmother, though she has that role in my life from her vantage point of being deceased. Just because she is dead, that doesn't make her not my grandmother.

Mimi and I were not close and there is a reason for that. She is dead, and there is a reason for that too; I mean a reason beyond the idea that we will all die, one day.

Mimi was crazy, literally. She was a paranoid schizophrenic. She didn't have a mild case either, if such a thing exists. For example, if she heard a Beetles song playing over the super market sound system, she'd begin screaming and run helter skelter for the door. She was certain that the Beetles were out to get her.

I am writing about her to try to make sense of my own life, and hers. I believe I know why she became so mentally ill. I hope in telling her story -- and my own -- that the two of us can provide answers for others who suffer from their own minds (and bodies) that fail them or even stalk them, as Mimi's mind did to her.

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