My grandfather, second from the left in the back, immigrated from Odessa, Russia with his family in 1917 when he was seventeen years old. This was the period of time analogous to Fiddler on the Roof. I never spoke to him of it because I was too young to be interested, and when I was old enough to be, he was gone. My father did ask him however and later told me that he didn’t like to talk of it because it was such a difficult time of his life, being exposed to death all around, walking past and over bodies in the water and on the ground. His name was Matthew, named after the apostle of course. He was German and during that period of time, turn of the century, there were many of Germany in Odessa, farming and turning poor land to rich, so much so that it was clear that the Bolsheviks wanted it back, and so when the began to take it, my family left.
Matthew came to America, learned the language, began working construction. He started an ice company, and he and his brothers would haul blocks of ice in carts and carry it on there backs with these huge iron pincer picks that alone weighed thirty pounds. I know because I found them in his garage one day, leaning against the wall. I loved that garage. I now have in my garage a blue dummy bazooka from WWII that my uncle Don brought back from the war. It always hung on the wall, high out of reach. It was the first thing I took when it came time to clean after everyone’s passing.
Grandfather began to build homes in that section of town that was populated largely by German immigrants. He then built a small store, long before things such as Super Value. From that store he supplied the southern portion of the city, much smaller then than it is now, through the difficult years of the depression and roughly twenty years after. Towards the tail end of the depression he had a box filled with IOUs and other documents of credit extended. He himself was not in debt. He burned the box.
Grandfather was the kindest, best man I had ever known. I never heard him raise his voice. I never saw him angry or even frustrated. He told me stories of cowboys and Indians and we watched Johnny Carson and the Wide World of Wrestling on weekend nights when visiting. He died when I was thirteen. It is likely he displayed some of the aforementioned emotions common to us all, but I never saw them. He went to church on Sundays and Holy days and I remember him as an usher, showing us to our pew. He always wore a dark suit and tie, with a white shirt, and a dark grey fedora. He gave a lot of money to the church. I know. I found the parish records in a box of papers in his closet. He gave land and an apartment building to the parish for an expansion project. I believe my grandfather is a saint. He is my first angel.
Actually, my chronological first angel is my Aunt Anne as she died first, when I was four and so my memories of her are brief and vivid. She looked to me then as she looks to me now, in the photo, although I would guess that ten years separated the face on paper and the face in my mind. I was special to her, or, she made me feel special, and the significance of her loving ministrations rivaled those of my mother. Now that I think of it, Jimmy was the first chronological angel as he died when only seven. he became real to me the afternoon I was cleaning out Grandpa and Grandma’s small closet in their bedroom. I found a box with some old books in German, papers, and a 8×12 black and white photo of a precious blond boy in a sailor uniform, and in the same box, a smaller wallet photo from the same sitting. He looked to be about seven and I imagined he died shortly after those pictures were taken.
These angels, my mother’s family, uncle D, uncle L, uncle E, and uncle P, grandma and grandpa were the center of my universe once upon a time in a special place, far away. They are largely why and who I am today. My mother, next to her sister in the photo, remains the last surviving member of her family and for my entire life the primary focus of her life was in caring for others. As the youngest of her family, the last thirty years of her life has been consumed by caring for her mother, then her ailing brothers, until they passed, one by one, the last, uncle P, dying at 89 a few months ago. I remember seeing uncle L about a year before he died. He sat across from me in his duplex living room that my family lived in forty years earlier, which we rented from him at the time. He smiled and said, “I beat the Pope,” meaning that he was older than Pope Benedict XVI who was 87 at the time; however, Pope Benedict is still alive at 91, so the Pope did win in the end.
Whenever I visit my mother at home, I am struck by the symmetry of it all, the circle of life as it were: she, living in the side of the duplex opposite the side we first lived in when moving back home when I was in fourth grade, on the edge of that special neighborhood that was my center. The houses that grandpa built across the street and down the block of that quiet street. Uncle D and L lived in Grandpa and Grandma’s old house, where they were born, and built the duplex across the street, on the corner. When we moved out of the one side, uncle E moved into that side and when the tenant living in the side opposite passed away after forty years of occupancy, never one experiencing an increase in rent, my mother moved in. When uncle E passed away, uncles D and L moved in because Grandpa and Grandma’s house was more difficult and it was easier for my mother to care for them, just living on the other side. Now, uncle E’s daughter lives on the one side where her father used to live. She remodeled, whereas my mother living on the other side, did not. My cousin is like a daughter to my mother and now helps care for her.
That is how my mother’s family is. Mom could live in a much nicer place, surrounded by much nicer things, but she does not want that or those other things, and so I stopped trying to talk her into moving. She goes to church several times a week, prays daily and has prayed and burned candles for me and my sister all the days of our lives it seems. I was as devout a Catholic as she early on as there really was no other option, and I grew up steeped in the rituals rules and routines of Catholicism.
Unfortunately, it didn’t stick as well as mother would have preferred, but I tried, and am still trying, and she remains my inspiration for she is the closest person I know, next to Grandpa, whose entire life seemed to me a profound demonstration of the Imitation of Christ that all Catholics should strive for, but rarely do. She has carried many crosses throughout her life, including many that I was responsible for. I do not wish to deliver upon her yet another one although I know she would bear it gladly and lovingly as any saint would do.
I have this photo at home on my desk and at work on the back wall of my locker, above the shelf, which is the image shared above. It gives me strength, my angels. I know they are there and with me; and it is not too difficult to imagine them all together, in a meadow of wildflowers, walking down a gentle slope towards me, silhouetted by blue sky and white clouds above.