Mia Regina Costanza Wiggers
November 30, 1967 - March 11,2023
Mia Regina Costanza Wiggers passed away peacefully on Saturday, March 11 at the too-young age of 55. The cause of death was ALS, better known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, though those who watched Mia over the past two years would endorse renaming it for her instead. Gehrig may have been the “luckiest man on the face of the Earth” – but Mia had the incredible ability to make the rest of us feel lucky instead.
Ask anyone in Mia’s hometown of Ogden Dunes, Indiana, where she created lifelong friends through her uniquely delightful mischievousness – the type of person who would prank you impishly, then hug you endlessly. Or her everexpanding crew of devotees, as she moved onto Smith College, then New York City, and finally Norwalk and Westport, Connecticut, where everyone from the Saugatuck Congregational Church community to her TLC entrepreneurship network felt her magic.
No one lucky enough to eat anything Mia prepared will ever forget it. Mia’s passion for Italian cuisine was nurtured at home by her mother, Aurelia Costanza, an excellent cook, and then ignited by her “Italian mother” Gabriella Benigni during her junior year abroad in Florence. While heaven may appear as Iowa cornfield to the likes of Lou Gehrig, Mia remained quite sure that it looks like a garden in Tuscany. Mia studied at the French Culinary Institute under famed pastry chef, Jacques Torres, and received a scholarship to master gelato and cassata in Sicily under Corrado Costanzo. She called her catering and education company Mia Cucina, and the world literally was her kitchen. Mia didn’t serve food – she used food to serve. She taught, from the 9-year-old “Junior Chefs” at Williams Sonoma to the 90-year-olds at the Westport Center for Senior Activities. Adding the title author to her legacy, over the last year she wrote a cookbook featuring the recipes that gave her the most joy, with a story accompanying each one.
She also gave, to the Long Ridge School in the form of tending to its vegetable garden, to the women refugees at New Haven’s Sanctuary Kitchen, to children uplifted by Creative Connections, to the conference-goers at Silverlake, surprised by cookies, breads and muffins too ethereal to be true.
Yet the luckiest people of all were her husband, Ed, and child, Lucia. Mia and Ed shared a quirky sense of humor, making each other smile through 27 years of marriage. She did everything in her power to raise Lucia into a kind, strong person; with the same urgency she poured into creating a perfect meal, done to perfection in the fixed time provided to her. There was never a doubt that Mia would make it to Lucia’s graduation from Williams College – in a life filled with great days, it was one of the best.
Few want to be remembered for their end-of-life, versus when they stood at their physical prime. Still Mia somehow made her final two years her most powerful. Even from a wheelchair, she made sure every visitor felt at ease and had fun, cracking jokes via assisted technology, like some futuristic combination of HAL and Sarah Silverman. Facing her own mortality, she used this precious time to enquire about her fortunate guests, instead of dwell on herself, and in doing so, elevated everyone who touched her; and, ultimately, herself.
Besides Ed and Lucia, Mia is survived by her mother, Aurelia; her sisters, Jennifer and Madeleine and her brother, Charlie and their families; her loving caregiver, Sophia Pak; dear aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, cousins, Ed’s mother and father and extended family who treasured her; hundreds of kind friends; and recipes for tiramisu and almond biscotti that will be treasured for generations.
There will be happy celebration of Mia’s life, full of food and music later this year, beginning with a memorial service at 11:00 am on Saturday, June 10 at the Saugatuck Congregational Church in Westport. In the meantime, those wishing to honor her may, in lieu of flowers, please make a donation, to the ALS Association Connecticut Chapter. Her spirit will live on from there, as Mia resides indelibly in anyone who ever reveled in her wit, tasted her cooking or felt her love. We were all that lucky.