[img]1|left|||no_popup[/img] Going into the weekend, one of my cousins was hatching a longshot scheme that she hoped would bring her dying mother and my aged father together one final time.
Of the five siblings, these two were the closest, probably because they were most alike temperamentally.
Unlike the others, who were more worldly, more driven and proud of it, Pop and his sister were guileless and utterly unpretentious throughout their long lives. My aunt would be 84 next Sunday. Pop is perspiring to reach 94 in two months, the oldest and youngest in their clan.
The other three siblings periodically engaged in fang-baring spats that, in some cases, spanned and scarred their lives.
It’s not that Pop and his sister were flat-minded phlegmatics. Rather, they dwelled on their own families, their own lives, aiming decidedly deaf ears toward siblings who couldn’t resist the delicious temptation to piercingly criticize persons with the same name.
Only When Age Intervened
Pop and his sister Rosalie were closest of all the siblings, not until their last breaths, but until their ability to dial telephones deserted them some time ago.
Pop and Rosalie were models of plain vanilla.
With nearly180 years between them, I never heard either criticize a family member for large or small faults.
Their preference for plain living will get you into much less trouble than the lifestyles of those of us who passionately begin every morning at 95 miles an hour, and then try to speed up.
Hardly ever blanching, Pop and his baby sister took life as it came at them, a deeply under-appreciated gift.
From where I stand, you never could tell whether life was spitting in their eye or bear-hugging them and slipping a winning lottery ticket into their grasp.
When Mom died a few weeks after their 43rd wedding anniversary, following a several-year war with cancer, Pop, who seldom had been out of her sight, bled tears for the briefest moment, then, undetected, tucked every feeling deep inside again.
It Was Nearly Over
When I called at the beginning of the weekend to explain Rosalie was near death, Pop said, succinctly, “Is that right?” Saturday night, he demurred when I relayed a shaky strategy for bringing him to her hospital bedside. His stoicism was tested again yesterday afternoon when I told him Rosalie had died 2 hours before. Pop’s abbreviated epitaph: “She is better off now.”
No hint of a breakdown.
A dozen years ago when my brother died suddenly, my sisters and I arranged an elaborate scheme for informing Pop, who was likely to collapse and dissolve. Paul and Pop had been very close. We should have known better. Pop never broke stride.
Pop and his baby sister, models of moderation, were affectionate enough toward the fighting wing of siblings, who were too busy disagreeing to notice how independent Pop and his main sister were.
Pop and Rosalie were typical children of the Great Depression. “The Grapes of Wrath” was representative of their supposedly deprived upbringing.
A thread of attitude that strings through Pop’s family, reminds me of Holocaust survivors I have known, parents who are exasperatingly enigmatic. The real Grandma and Grandpa are as unknown to me as the final name in the Tallahassee telephone directory.
Parental Invulnerability
Surely not through any formalized agreement, my father and his siblings, fastidiously, have practiced intensely lockstep oral history in discussions about their parents. Grandpa was the finest man since Adam, Grandma, since Mrs. Adam.
The siblings would have thrown themselves in front of the onrushing horse that Grandpa owned before admitting to the tiniest dent in either parent’s character or unassailable resumes.
All families acknowledge an elephant in the room, but my relatives improved, markedly, on the breed.
Grandma and Grandpa, in addition to raising 5 children, owned a zoo that boasted of 2 more elephants than exist on the African continent. Nobody talked about anything.
As generations are obliged to do, two siblings further upgraded that moral model.
Pop and Rosalie, right down to yesterday, dedicated their lives, consciously, to never, ever speaking illy of those whom they held most precious. Or anyone else. Now there is a legacy.
