I Remember Miko

 

I haven’t been able to process this before now, but when I looked at the calendar today it said "mail Miko's birthday card". 

Miko and Tessie moved in next door to me 5 years ago August.  She was so enamored with my dog she requested the apartment next door rather than the one they had ready for her across the way.   I remember the first evening I actually spoke to her – it was my birthday 2016.  We were both just getting home from work.  We stood outside our apartments chatting in the August heat for about 45 minutes when she decided she needed to drive me to Dairy Queen since it happened to be my birthday.  No time for dinner – just birthday ice cream.  This was the first time I experienced being kidnapped by Miko, but it was not the last. 

I soon learned that anytime you went shopping with Miko, you needed to block out the entire afternoon/evening – it was never an easy in and out.  Shopping with Miko was a gold-medal Olympic event.   She looked at and analyzed everything.   

I especially remember the first Christmas tho – we had been at the Big Lots and found these stuffed showmen that spoke to you when you pinched their hand.  She turned them all on and kept speaking to them and of course a couple dozen snow men started speaking – and speaking – and speaking, until a clerk , who almost peed herself laughing – came over to turn them all off.   BUT it didn't end there……the next evening I went back to purchase another of the snowmen for a co-worker, and who did I find with a cart-full of snowmen?  Miko.  She decided she needed to buy one for every one of her relatives in Okinawa.  She left zero on the shelf.  I managed to convince her not everyone back home needed a snowman. Still, I think she purchased 10 of them.  But I wasn’t always there to restrain her – she once came home with 15 African violet plants because they were only $1 each.   The Dollar Store was especially dangerous for her.  I don't think she ever left without buying at least 10 pair of reader glasses. (Which she was constantly misplacing)

She was always trying to feed me and I'd come home from work and she's call and say come to dinner. She introduced me to Asian cuisine but could keep her seaweed to herself!    She could not believe I had NEVER had Raman noodles so that first Christmas she wrapped up a CASE of them for me. She amazed me at how much she actually could eat – I watched her polish off a double burger at 5Guys (with everything on it).   And outside of a rabbit I’ve never met anyone who could eat as much spinach as Miko.  

If you said you liked something – she got it for you. I learned to be careful around her.  I once mentioned an apple bar I liked from Trader Joes.  The next thing I know she came back from Trader Joes one day with 5 boxes of apple bars!   If you asked her to pick up ONE of something you would have to expect at least two.  Always a backup.  I often thought she thought she was still buying for 5 children!  That was just Miko.  She was generous to a fault. 

She moved in with me in 2017 and that’s when I found out she had more clothes then any one person I ever met.  She had a coat for every day- any weather – any color and boots & shoes to match.  Scarves – she had a million of them and the only person I knew that could actually pull it off year round.   I don’t think I ever saw her in the same outfit twice!  It helped that she worked at QVC – she never missed their employee sales.  Once she moved in with me I was always finding new clothes she would happen to pick up for me as well– I think she was trying to tell me something....Next to clothes, I never saw anyone with more supplements  - she had them for everything you could think of and now has me taking more of them as well!

Living with Miko was never dull.  There was the time she ate the dogs kibble thinking it was a new cereal (that didn't taste that good). Or the time during a snow storm we had to go out to get Pringles.  Or the countless mornings I had to call her phone because she couldn't find hers.

Shortly after she moved in with me, she was in a car accident.  She called me and I sat at Paoli hospital while they did scan to be sure she was ok.  Even lying in that hospital bed she was worried about the man who hit her.  That was Miko.    It was then – September of 2017 that they detected “something”. That something turned out to be pancreatic cancer.    I suppose it was luck to have found it out, had she not had the accident it may have been a much shorter time to have spent with her.  As it was, we had almost 4 years more.

Thru everything – the operation – the countless chemo’s – the trials – the hair & weight loss – she never stopped being optimistic, and she never stopped thinking about everyone else first.  Up until a few months before she passed, she was still driving around seeing people - going to them when she should have been letting them come to her.  

She certainly made an indelible mark on my life.  She definitely got me feeling closer to God.  She helped me to be more patient and giving.  I can’t think of Big Lots, Hobby Lobby, the Dollar Store or 5Guys without thinking of Miko. And I will forever hear her saying whatchamacallit?  

We said our final good-byes to Miko on August 15^th.  It was a beautiful ceremony scripted by Miko.  It was a full house.  So many similar stories.  So many lives touched.  So many hearts broken.

 Miss you fiercely - Rest in Peace.  Happy Birthday!