Family stories, some told directly, some, whispered, murmured like the gusts of wind begging to enter your home on a cold night when the crocked windows are not completely sealed tight, with a just enough space between the glass and the sill, for brushes of a breeze to sneak in leave a chill and expire as the heater kicks in. Some stories bold and BIG, proudly proclaimed, heroes emerge, some tales never quite finished, secrets stuffed in a box too small to even permit the lid to lay tight enough to seal and conceal its contents. My Aunt Meercy (I always thought of her as my Doris Day, my Auntie Mame), passed away a few months ago at the age of 102. She had been a working woman in the 50’s and 60’s something unusual for the Eisenhower men are men and women are women era, and a useful female is tied at the ankles, wearing an apron, a bun or two in the oven, and a husband for who she may not have been chattel, but was a perfect slave, taking care of his needs first and foremost. My Aunt was open, and hid very little, with the exception of one amazing photo, and the who, why, where and when.
Today is Veterans Day, and once upon a time My Aunt Meercy, my beautiful in spirit and in heart, (I swear to God, Doris Day of Pittsburgh), had a photo of her younger self, with aa man in uniform, sitting on the lawn of a park, both looking at each other as if nothing else in the world mattered, and as if whatever came next, could not erase, this human quality, this human frailty, this unique wonderful/awful/necessary and at the same time, emotion originating from our core, traveling to our brain and finding its way to our soul…called love. His name was Bobby, he was off to the Second World War, she was Meercy, he was to leave and wanted more than anything to marry her, she would have said yes, but time was moving too fast, and all the unimportant gray matter like arthritis of reality clung heavy, and acted like cement, holding both Bobby and Meercy form just saying I do that day. All of this I found out, weeks before my aunt began her decline into dementia. All of this I heard as my Aunt always one to plan, handed me her photo of Bobby and her, and told me, please remember this for me! I have a lump in my throat as I write this because I know how much I love my husband, Joe, and the mere idea that once upon a time for us might have never had a happily ever ending, makes me want to moan as if I was a wolf howling at the moon.
It is Veterans Day. We all know loved ones who we miss, who died or have come home a different person because they felt a duty to country and to democracy. However it is Veterans Day 2019, and the Patriotism, the love of country, the desire for democracy has changed and morphed into the better American being the one with a MAGA hat, a Nazi Flag, White Hoods and support of Oligarchs whose only allegiance is to Russia and to keep America conflicted and divided! To think that families whose loved ones died for this nation who fought Fascism, Authoritarianism, Communism support Trump and his Enablers is mind-blowing and only should be found as the strange ending in a Twilight Zone movie, with Rod Serling smoking his cigarette and reminding us that life is always one shadow away from reality!
I believe in Heaven. I believe in a God who is not created by humans but is greater than anything a human being has proven to be over the eons of life. And I believe this Veterans Day my Aunt and her boyfriend Bobby are sitting on the grass leaning in slowly but surely to kiss, a kiss for eternity!
