Remembering Patti "Gigi" McLaughlin — A LawDawg in Wolverine Country

When my grandmother died this spring I did not have the words yet to write this piece. Not because it was too sad—though sad it was—but really because of the opposite. Patti’s mind was no longer with us so it was a relief in its own way when her body followed on May 19. 2022. My guilt about feeling this way stopped me from setting down my thoughts on this beloved woman. I also had the cloud of our shared recent past where she didn’t recognize my face and was agitated by my presence the second to last time I saw her. But little by little, the difficult last five years, and especially the last 9 months, faded from short to long term memory and I was able to process what a person she was with a bigger lens. So when what would have been her 85th birthday came up on my calendar on November 6, I thought I finally had gathered my thoughts enough.

This is not an obituary for Patti McLaughlin because I can’t properly do that. I hope someone else will some day; someone who knew her for longer and in different ways. This is a remembrance of a grandmother, with all the strengths and weaknesses that comes with that connection. I find as I sit to write this how little I know of her life. I know of her as my “Gigi” and that can only cover 25 of her 84 years. I know she was born and raised in the Detroit area or suburbs. Royal Oak I think, but even that is likely wrong. I do know she met by late grandfather William “Bill” McLaughlin at the age of 3. He was always “Billy McLaughlin” in that oft-told story, a name I never heard regarding my Papa in any other context. They were married sometime after he returned from a brief stint in the Air Force in the Korean War. She had two children and with them moved from Metro Detroit, to Canada, to Metro Detroit, almost to South Africa, and then to Clarkston, MI until my aunt and father moved out. And then when I began to know her, she lived in two places: Beacon Hill Apartments in Auburn Hills, MI and a vacation home at Lime Lake in Leelanau County, MI they called Birch Cove.

She was many things to me and I have an odd hodgepodge of memories of her. I think what I noticed about Patti are things many noted in her as well and I hope others might get a little glimpse at a remarkable lady. Or maybe this will be too personal and eclectic and be historically inaccurate. But this is the Patti I knew.

Gigi was my “city grandma.” She picked her own grandma” name for Erin and me to use: Gigi was really “GG” for “gracious grandma.” As for the “city,” some may be familiar with Auburn Hills, MI; it is not some grand cosmopolitan city but rather a distant Detroit suburb home to the Pistons (at the time), a university, traffic, and bunch of neighborhoods. And also Chrysler, from which my grandfather retired before I was born. But to me, they lived in the Big City Detroit. (naïve, I know) a She embodied a classy city grandma to me, from my first memories to my last visit. She kept an immaculate house and was herself always put together. At home, it was only kind of a request to make my bed; at Gigi’s it was a requirement. When I visited her in her nursing home, even at the point when she was helped with essentially everything, she would still straighten creases off the tablecloth, fold her napkin after the meal, and clear crumbs until her place-setting was immaculate. Until her very last days, far longer than one might expect with the cognitive issues she had, I always saw her put together and wearing jewelry. She always wore a curly wig. I don’t recall her Birch Cove vacation clothes being notably different except for a memorable long white t shirt that had a drawing on it that made it look like she was wearing a bikini. I think she found it hilarious.

Her sophistication and class manifested most for me in her love of learning and education. She herself was not highly formally educated, she graduated HS and attended only MSU briefly and my grandfather dropped out of HS and got his GED through the Air Force. But she loved learning for herself and in others. I saw her the most over the summers when we would stay for a week or two straight at Birch Cove and she treated every day with her grandkids like it was learning opportunity or day for new experiences. We went to museums and science stores on vacation when we might have wanted to stay by the lake and swim or play with friends. I have so many books of all manner of things that she gave me, from novels to machinery, to science, to space, to animals. I particularly remember she loved Egyptology and King Tut for a time. We had summer educational workbooks (though I think I got let off the hook compared to my cousin Adam, who is older and lived with my grandparents) and there was frequent time set aside for required reading. She loved her grandchildren dearly and their educational attainments are a credit, at least in part, to her. Adam attended The Citadel, a military college in SC, is an engineer in the Navy, and recently earned an MS in Operations Research. Grading scales don’t go high enough for Erin, who had a GPA of 4.billion in college, was top of her class in Vet School, and is now an intern/resident at Ohio State’s animal hospital. And I, the least motivated of the bunch (and likely least intelligent), am a lawyer in her beloved Traverse City.

Of her many interests, one of the most memorable for me was her love of all things Irish heritage. I am not sure she had a drop of Irish blood, but being married to half-Irish Bill McLaughlin was enough reason for her. I see her heavy influence in having two grandchildren named “Connor” and “Erin.” Riverdance was played on VHS once a trip (and likely more) and she gave my sister her own copy. Celtic crosses, blessings, and wall hangings were present in all dwellings (tastefully of course, remember, she was a classy lady). Though not raised Catholic, I always got the sense she was more Catholic than my grandpa. She was very into genealogy and her research was extensive from a time before dedicated mainstream websites made it so much easier. She was a power internet and email user in the 90s and 00’s when people half her age were not, all to learn more and share knowledge with others. I wish I knew how it happened, but I have a book on the Black Donnelly’s (basically Irish Hatfield’s & McCoy’s in Canada) to which she contributed and in which she is acknowledged by name.

As one might guess from the above description, Gigi was not one to sit idly. If she was sitting, she was very, very likely knitting a baby hat or adult scarf, or perhaps reading to a grandkid, or telling a story. But probably knitting. Easily 1,000 little baby heads were warmed by her hats. And when she got up and moved, she MOVED. She was a small woman who liked to joke that she was shrinking and one day we’d carry her around in a little bag. But in spite of this, or perhaps because of this, she hustled everywhere. Even in the nursing home, when she was a changed woman in so many ways, she would still walk to the lunchroom at what for her late 20s grandson was a brisk pace. My understanding is that she was required to use a walker later in her time there not because she needed it to get around but because she moved too fast for an 83 year old woman with cognitive decline. This industriousness was often accompanied by a memorable habit: puffing her cheeks and exhaling forcefully as she started off, as if she was putting herself in another gear and needed the turbo. I hope I took many traits from my Gigi, but I certainly inherited this puffed cheeks mannerism and I think of her whenever I catch myself doing it.

This leads us back to a little biography. I lived in Western PA and Northern Michigan for the first 12 years of my life and got to see a lot of my Gigi and Papa, whether visiting them in “Detroit” or staying for a week or two at Birch Cove. That sadly ended in 2004 when my grandpa died and my family and I moved from MI to TN. From 2004 to 2019, I rarely saw her, to my great sorrow now. She briefly moved to TN for a year but moved back to Michigan because it was home and it was where her activities and her husband were. Then she faded out of my life for a decade and it is my impression that her own world grew smaller through the years. We would talk occasionally—I particularly remember her calling me out of the blue to talk about how good the Pistons were one year—on birthdays and holidays but we didn’t see her. Though this is not why we lost touch, she unfortunately started losing her memory in 2014 and had a guardian by 2017.

But then a remarkable thing happened. I, who had lived a decade in TN, gone to college in PA, and law school in GA, found myself with my first lawyer job in Flint, MI in late 2018. I lived south of Flint in a town called Grand Blanc and her assisted living was in Rochester, so I was only 45 minutes away. By this time, she was in a secured memory floor, though I was so out of contact I am not sure I knew that when I first visited. I don’t even know what I said or did the first time I visited, but for the next 15 months God blessed us with a new relationship. We couldn’t talk for long, but we could sit and watch movies together. So every two-four weeks I’d drive down and watch Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, or A Dogs Purpose, or My Fair Lady, or a lifetime Christmas movie with her in her room and maybe sit through lunch with her. Sometimes holding her hand, sometimes just commenting on the pretty clothes and cars with her. I am not sure she ever knew who I was to her in this period, but I could tell that she recognized me as someone who had been there before and was happy to be with. She was a different person than the Gigi I knew before, but in many ways just the same. I try to think of the smiles I received during this period when I am really missing my Gigi.

Like all things, this relationship ended as well. The COVID-19 pandemic came and I couldn’t see her and then I moved away from Flint. I saw her three more times in 2021 and 2022, which progressed from good and normal to bad/sad when she hardly cared I was there, to saying goodbye right before her end when she was essentially non-responsive. February 2020 to May 2022 was a heart-breaking period in so many ways and I mourn the lost time the pandemic stole from us.

My witty, classy, speedy Irish grandma died on May 19, 2022. She was 84 years old. She was so many things to so many people but she was my Gigi and I miss her dearly but am glad she is at peace with her beloved Billy McLaughlin.