Monday, July 07, 2014

THOSE I REMEMBER


It was 68 years ago today: I attended my first wedding. I was a year old and Mom and Dad were attending a church ceremony, I got cranky and the baby sitter took me to church to get some peace.

It was a marriage made in Heaven, two people that loved each other and lived for each other were finally joining hands in matrimony. They were very giving people that made it real by demonstrating that love is not bound by a blood line, but by the way their hearts were made.

They were Marie and Frank, my aunt and uncle. She was my mother’s youngest sister and he was the prince she married. She was a beautiful woman, even to the day she passed, 92 years after her birth and he stood the test of time as a real prince. Having served in General Patton’s army, he told me tales of his experiences in combat, the habits he learned to survive even in peacetime. He was not only an army hero, but an inspiration to me, having bettered himself by going to night school under the GI Bill, while working days in the Brooklyn Navy Yard in the accounting office, before joining the fight in the army.

Their lives went un-herald while they were alive except for the people they touched with their kindness, and love. I was lucky to have them in my life.

Aunt Marie would arrive everyday when we all lived in Brooklyn, a housewife with an amazing sense of humor and a tendency for fun. She was a teaser and I was usually the one that got teased. She and Mom would go shopping on Broadway or Picken Avenue and push baby strollers as they chatted and laughed.

They had a son named Nicholas and a son named William. One was a natural born son and one was adopted. I don’t need to tell you who was adopted and who was natural birth, because it didn’t matter to the parents, both were loved equally.

Then one day they moved away and soon we moved too from Brooklyn, but the connection was never broken. They came for holidays and special events and so life went on. Then one day it was time for college, and so I enrolled and began an arduous journey everyday trying to get to school, not having the money to stay in a dorm, I took trains and hitch hiked to school, a great struggle for someone without the means. I was driven to succeed and would not give up, mom and dad had no money to give me even a used car, and my two jobs supported my education and train fare.

One day my aunt and uncle came for dinner and started asking me questions about how school was going. I started telling them and all of a sudden, I had a place to stay near the college, meals and even my own room! They would help me out, no loan, no qualifiers, just heart giving love for their nephew. Writing this tears come to my eyes a little, they made the biggest difference in my life, and to this day I could never repay them, nor would they take anything form me.

Today, so many years after, they have lost a son and have only one survivor of this wonderful giving and loving couple. I will hold their memory in my heart so they can live a little longer. If anyone ever tells you there is no God, they are wrong, God lives in those of us who give like that couple that married 68 years ago today, and their spirit lives on.

Thank you Aunt Marie and Uncle Frank, I love and miss you both, Happy Anniversary!


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