31 Piece by Piece

Day 31 - Feb. 19

















I squeeze room on the kitchen table between the photographs, for my coffee and notebook. Will it be difficult to find addresses for each cousin who attended the funeral? We never lived near extended family.

I remember a few scattered visits from my childhood.

Father’s cousin, Theo, married an Italian who made his own pasta. I remember watching in awe as Leonard cranked out the long spaghetti noodles on the kitchen counter. I played with their daughter, Marilyn, and other cousins in their back family room or down in the basement. No one was allowed in the living room…the lights were never turned on, we were told not to walk through it, the room was being reserved. What a contrast to the reckless abandon of pillow fights with couch cushions in the family room, boxes of old clothes and jewelry strung out all over the basement in our fantasy play, or the crescendo of warm laughter and love in the kitchen where such wonderful Polish and Italian fare was created and relished by this chorus of family!

Grandmother’s home also had a living room in reserve, darkened and unused. A front door opened into the dining room, mainly a walk-through on the way to her kitchen. Uncle Simon, one of father’s oldest brothers, however, did use this dining room. Every evening after work he rested in an easy chair by the window, his tiny respite on earth. I learned many years later, he was one of the brothers who suffered very hard times in the mines as a young teen. What I knew as a child was sitting on his lap to say goodbye before our road trip back to Rochester, he always found a handful of change in his pockets to place in my hand--his Polish Uncle farewell. He died in his sleep one night in the bedroom he and three brothers had shared growing up.

I have a vague recollection of Aunt Ethel, the oldest sister, sitting in a corner of the kitchen warmed by the wood-burning stove. She’s the one who took father with her on Sunday morning to a Pentecostal service in the next little town. Grandmother, directly from Poland, was Roman Catholic. The catholic church loomed large on a corner down the next block from their home. I heard stories of Polish women on Good Friday, encircling the huge structure on their knees. They prayed and progressed step by step, knees on cinders, bleeding, all the way around the church. Father, the last of twelve children, was to be the priest in the family.

Ethel bundled up nine year-old Chester after mass for the couple mile walk to the church she’d discovered--a church proclaiming the message of God’s love free to anyone who accepts His son, Christ, into his or her life--no penance to pay and plenty of joyful praise in that hour of thanks! Father never wavered from those days forward in his love and dedication to this God of grace, mercy and love. Grandmother told him he must attend mass until he completed his confirmation at age twelve.

He recounts that morning after the confirmation, running all the way to church and never looking back! One by one over the years, most of the brothers and sisters, and finally grandmother joined in.

“David, do you know where I can find a few little boxes? I’d like to put together some items to send to my cousins who attended Dad’s funeral.” Fifteen minutes later David arrives with an armload of perfectly sized boxes, the exact number I need. I arrange them side by side in father’s living room, write a card for each cousin and enclose the photographs hand-picked the day before.

I have not yet sorted, packed, or thrown away any of father’s possessions. I know it’s time to get started if I’m going to complete this project in two weeks time.

Opening the German cabinet doors and glass display cases, I reach in to father’s life. But for today, it is only to hold it, piece by piece, as I pass it to each cousin’s box. I pass it to the children of his brothers and sisters, back to his family, desiring to somehow connect them with his loving spirit through these material possessions he touched.

After calling hours, the night before father’s funeral, Gloria and Norma noticed a photograph on father’s kitchen wall. I had framed a photo Uncle Bob blew up from a snapshot. The family is posed in grandmother’s reserved living room, the lights on full. Together we looked up at each of our parents, early in their marriages, the men standing behind their wives, all gathered around grandmother.

Though we never lived near each other, and I barely know these cousins, I discovered it was easy to find each of their addresses after all. I simply opened father’s little hand-written address book. There alphabetically, some with married last names I was unaware of, in his miniscule hand writing father had recorded complete, accurate and up-to-date addresses and phone numbers for each one.

I begin to fill the hole he has left in my life, with these connections.

“Thanks, Dad, for the roadmap.”

Perhaps we cousins are like an unused, darkened living room. A special place in the house, we've been held in reserve, and now the lights are on full.