Nearly three and a half years ago, my stepmother - a lady in her 80's, known to her friends and family as Mimi - returned from hospital, where she had been treated for depression, made an appointment with friends to go shopping the next day and sometime during the night, vanished.  

Mimi lived the Medicine Hat and to give you a picture of the area it is flat prairie, practically desert, at least in terms of Canada.  When you're out of the city you can see and be seen for miles in any direction.  The RCMP have never failed to find a missing person on that prairie.  They failed that July.  No sign of her was ever found. Her bank accounts and charge cards were never used and there was absolutely no sign of foul play.  To this day no one knows what happened that July evening or why.

 

I am sad to say that Mimi and I were not friends, at least in her eyes.  I live in Edmonton and hadn't seen her in over ten years.  Somehow, that does not make a difference in my sorrow that she died alone and only God knows where her body lies.  Yes, I do believe she is dead - not just legally dead, but actually dead.

 

But, I also grieve for her life.  She was one of those people who could not seem to accept or give love.  She wanted and needed attention and certainly was jealous of those who had what was missing in her life, but, to her, love was more a matter of a contract than an emotion.  I do not say this because I don't like or because she didn't like me, I say this because that is what I saw while I was living at home.  My father said, much later, when I was a mother myself, that she was jealous of me.  Maybe she was, tho' I have no idea why.

If I have given the impression that life with Mimi was emotionally draining and, sometimes, downright aweful, it is the correct one.  To outsiders she was the soul of courtesy, to her Canadian family ( she emigrated from Mexico) she was not. So I grieve that she lost so much during her life with us, that she was unhappy and at a loss as how to fix it.  I grieve for the fact that she will never lie beside my father in the cemetary and that there was no one there to say goodby.

 

Mimi was the last of my immediate family to die.  Both my natural mother and my father suffered long and painful illnesses before they left us.  But Mimi's story is the saddest.  

Look at your family today and remind yourself that these are the people who really know you.  Never forget to show that you love them, never miss that chance.  A life without love shared is as lost as my poor stepmother.  May she rest in peace, wherever she is. 

Tags: Missing Persons Family Life

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