Today marks five years since my dad died, easy to remember because of the feast day. I wrote this in a very short form right after his death but then expanded upon it when my mother passed too. Treasure all the little things you have and try to remember what's important.
I've been thinking a lot about my family lately. I've been blessed with a large one. My wife and I only have two daughters but I have four much older brothers and sisters, which by today's standards would be considered a lot. "Breeders" my parents might be called now, but it wasn't so long ago that 5 children was fairly normal, especially if you were Catholic. My parents had 23 brothers and sisters between them. And including their spouses and the children they produced, the population stretches into the hundreds just counting from my grandparents.
Such a large group naturally produces a wide array of differing personalities, careers, and interests. There have been engineers, artists, firemen, coal miners, bus drivers, airmen, soldiers, and merchant mariners. Nurses, bankers, writers, world-record holders, a nun. Drinkers, smokers, and gamblers. Intellectuals, world-travelers. Heroes and rascals. Poets. Singers, musicians, great cooks, and bad drivers. Republicans, Democrats, socialists and conservatives. Roman Catholics. I had an uncle who was Joe DiMaggio's accountant and sat on the groom's side for his wedding to Marilyn Monroe. One survived the Battle of the Bulge. Another (may God forgive him) helped develop the precursor to the bar-code. The accomplishments are never-ending.Family.
And whenever two or three or 20 of them got together, life became much, much more interesting. Fireworks usually, but often too enlightenment. It was truly a privilege to have grown up around these larger than life peoples. My adulthood has been brushed and polished by their stories, experiences, mistakes, and successes. By their love - for life and for each other.
This populous bounty sprung from the Freeland and Shenandoah areas of Pennsylvania - coal country. A part of the nation that was truly developed by immigrants, mostly eastern European. In my case, Polish and Slovakian. Two cultures that worked and fought to become Americans - good ones - without much help from anyone but themselves. They relied on each other. They helped each other. They ate together, worked together, cried and laughed together. And they made it, most of them. And in the case of my family, most never left for long. They stayed close to where their roots were.
The reason I've been thinking about family so much lately is because of a faded blue box that’s sitting in my bedroom closet. Not really a box, but more of a suitcase with a piece of twine latched through its top. I just moved it there from the pantry in my kitchen where it’s been sitting for three years. You see, my father died from a head injury in November of 2004. He spent a few days in tormented critical care before a final attempt was made to save him under surgery. He never came out of the induced coma. He was 75. The man who spent his life giving and doing for others without accepting anything in return was finally forced to be on the receiving end of our charity. We took care of him the best we could, especially so my brother who had followed him into the Air Force. He died a week later with my scapular around his neck.
The blue case that’s now sitting in my closet is my father's accordion. Everyone knew my father by his generosity but also by his accordion. It sat by his casket at the wake. It was one of only a few things I asked to have of his when he passed. A spent shell from the honor guard at his funeral, his rosary ring, his 1955 Missal, a book that was beside his recliner, and his accordion. This accordion wasn't brought out often. Usually at holidays but always when there were family and friends. And he wasn't the best player but that's what made it all the more special. When he played, he was telling us about himself. Where he came from. What he loved. He was playing for us. It was his gift and it unites us all even though many of us are now thousands of miles away. It's part of the family.
My mother died in February. A very slow and drawn-out fibrosis of her lungs and heart that began shortly after my father went. Little by little, the daily routines of her life were taken away and replaced with new ones. Ones that didn’t bring joy or satisfaction, but instead ones that were necessary just to make it to another day. All those little chores that we take for granted or do with a sigh had become impossible. Getting dressed. Doing laundry. Standing up. These gave way to rotating her oxygen tank, draining her lungs of fluid, and in the end, it was enough for her to just chew and swallow a bite of toast.
We all had time with her during her gradual decline. Mom wasn’t easy. One of my brothers would stay for weeks at a time taking care of her. One of my sisters broke her knee and tended to her from a wheelchair. A “saint-maker” is what they would have called Mom in her day. We watched her endure a personal hell. She said that when she was a child, she prayed to Jesus to allow her to atone for all the sins in her life before she died. She wanted to go straight to heaven. She died at home in front of my brother and sister, looking up at something above her, with her arms stretched out like a child waiting to be picked up.
One by one by one they disappear. My grandparents, aunts and uncles, my mother and father. A cousin died last month of heart failure at the age of fifty eight. Next will come brothers and sisters. They age, they go, and you can’t stop it. They can never be replaced. You pray that God’s grace is shining on them and you’ll get to see them again one day.
A lot of people like to think that life is a circle. It’s not. While it may be true that history repeats itself, and what comes around goes around, nothing is ever the same. Life is a straight line. You’re born at a point on that line and you die at a point on that line a little further down. There’s no going back. At first thought, it seems so simple and cold. But it’s not. It’s not, because there are other points on that line. Points where others are first beginning their journey, or ending it. Points that mark profound events in the life of a person, or even small personal ones. These overlapping segments are what make our short journey on this line so miraculously worthwhile. We get to share it.
We don’t often get to choose with whom or under what circumstance we share our life. Sometimes we’ll never even know how we’ve affected others. My father never knew that I would one day tell my daughter the story about how his wrist came to be so misshapen. How, as a little boy, he had broken his arm playing football when he was supposed to be out picking huckleberries for the pies his mother would sell. How, instead of going home to face the wrath of his father, he wrapped his arm tightly in his t-shirt and went and did his chore without ever telling anyone about his injury. How, forty five years after that, I would break my arm playing football when I was supposed to be home eating dinner. How he made me wait on the couch until he finished his mashed potatoes and peas before he took me to the hospital. And how these stories made my daughter understand that the little crick she had in her neck after sleeping awkwardly was not something that merited dramatics.
I look at that old blue case and it reminds me of my grandmother and her stuffed cabbages, French toast, and apple pie. It reminds me of tiny little compact cars that my father squeezed his 300 pound frame into. Of cigars, chess pieces, and poker chips, and American flags. Christmas morning. It reminds me of the loudest voice in church. It reminds me of my wife, who woke me up in the middle of the night a week after my father died and said “He’s here.”
When I received the accordion, it was my intention to learn to play it. To honor my father. To keep a tradition alive. I called around and found some wonderful people involved in the accordion community. Who knew there was an accordion community? A young Ukrainian immigrant came to my house to get me started. I had to relearn how to read music. And he pointed me to another older man that lived quite near me who was an accordion enthusiast. When I went to meet him, he had an entire room devoted to his collection – antiques, some of them, but mostly just a large collection of beautiful, colorful accordions. He grew up in Pennsylvania too, same age as my father, just a few more miles away. His wife works in the Bishop’s office. It was like meeting another uncle. I showed him the accordion and he pointed out a hole in the keyboard, some broken buttons, and a big tear along the bellows. It was going to need a lot of repair. But the shock came when I learned that my giant of a father had been playing a child’s instrument. It was made for kids, a starter instrument. I looked again at the skinny keys and tiny buttons and wondered how in the world did he ever get his fingers over them. He got this accordion as a child, learned to play it without a lesson, and for 60 years he never let it go. So far, I’ve left it as it is. If this old blue case can elicit so many memories for me, I can’t imagine what stirred in my father’s head each time he looked at it.
This old blue case is like a magic mirror for what it means to me to be part of a family. My family. It was my father’s accordion but it belongs to us all. I look at that old blue case and I don’t just think of my father. It points to everything and everyone on that ever-flowing line on which he lived. Because before he was my father, he was a son, and then a brother. He was my uncle’s friend. He was my mother’s husband. My daughter’s grandfather. All those fantastic people he shared his life with and all those who shared theirs with him come pouring out of that accordion box. Like music. And if it was my father’s choice, it would of course be polka music.
Finally, I look at that old blue case and I think what I will leave behind. What kind of memories am I leaving for my children? What have I done that my children will tell to their children? Will my children someday have an old blue case of their own to ponder over and make them feel part of something special? I hope so. I’ll probably never know, but it’s nice to think about.
Last week I posted a poll on the sidebar regarding the Blessed Virgin's title as "Mediatrix of All Graces." Coincidentally a few days later, Archistrategos at Ecce Ego, Quia Vocasti Me delivered a post detailing the recent lifting of the sixty year ban on the public veneration of Our Lady under the title of "Mediatrix of All Grace" in the Philippine city of Lipa. I've never heard of it until now but it's a fascinating story of humility and obedience and I hope the wheels don't turn too slowly as the incident is re-investigated.
