"...this train carries saints and sinners,
this train carries losers and winners,
this train carries whores and gamblers,
this train carries lost souls...
I said now, this train
carries broken-hearted,
thieves and sweet souls departed-
this train carries fools, carries kings
yes...this train...All Aboard..."
--Land of Hope and Dreams, Bruce Springsteen
My aunts, my father's sisters and all that is left of his side of the family, are dying. In the moving pictures in my head, a mostly silent film, where images come in color and in black and white, and my senses of touch and smell remain active, engaged, I see something they no longer see. I see love. I feel it. I see myself, too small to matter much, in a starring role along with a co-star, my sister. We were the apples of my grandma's eye. Our father, now thrown into a trash-pile of memories they no longer wish to have, was a good brother and son, whose only crime was dying too young, too many years ago for their feeble minds to remember how much he loved them, how much he did for them, how good he was. They have had the "luxury" to grow bitter by living long and unwell, blaming him, his children, his wife--our mother-- in a convenient, wholesale sweep of our true history, for a revisionist one that bears no resemblance to reality. Still, I love them. But, I am so very hurt. They went from being classy little women, in pill-box hats and white gloves, attending church, and hating Democrats, to old and vicious harpies, in diapers and old night gowns, attending only to their innate sense of God doing them injustices never before so visited on any others, and, with greater vitriol than yesterday or the day before, hating Democrats.
I think of my mother's face--one of such usual happiness--falling as they degraded her husband, who died at the age of 53, who worked six days a week, who gave his sisters money, solace--pulling my Uncle Phil--my Aunt Jo's husband--out of bars all over Long Island, taking him home, washing him up, staying with my aunt until she was composed, coming home, getting washed and dressed and going to work without any sleep...my father, who they called "good for nothing," who was not given the gift of longevity...my father, who worked himself to death for his entire and extended family...my father, who did not live to see his children become educated, successful professional women of great moral character and every kind of generosity...who taught us good sportsmanship on and off the softball field where we played as he coached us...who had a massive heart attack sitting next to my mother on a plane as they were going off for the first vacation they were going to have since their honeymoon 24 and a half years before, an early 25th wedding anniversary gift to my mother...who died next to her as the plane taxied...who never saw their destination, but a final one into God's arms, the Land of Hope and Dreams, where he could touch the face of his mother again, and hug the father he lost at the age of 14...my father...my father...too good for either of you, Aunt Jo and Aunt Sara...quite out of your league, as a matter of fact...you dare renounce him, call him names, with no moral authority or character to call your own...you dare sully him...MY FATHER...who I wish had some of those years you so ignorantly wasted feeding hatreds and injustices more imagined than real...MY FATHER...who never got to see me become an award-winning teacher...who never got to see my sister, Ann, become an ethical and successful Wall Street phenom and a mother of two grandsons he never got to meet...MY FATHER...not "good for nothing," but too good for this world, too good for you to have deserved such a one as a brother...MY FATHER...don't you dare me to tempt Fate with all the contempt I am now feeling...MY FATHER, I say, who did more good in his short time here than you ever did in your nine decades each...may you both live to be a hundred, which would give you time to see the error of your ways, to see that you lived well, traveled the world, ate the finest foods, wore the finest clothes, knew luxury and comfort into grand old age, had much to be thankful for, and that yes, others did suffer more, suffer longer, suffer hideously in the concentration camps of the Holocaust, the trains of death, chained and enslaved in the filth of rotting ship-holds, in death marches led by the scum we called kings, through the ethnic cleansings, the rapes, the wars, the losses of home, family, ALL...and I see my mother's face falling...she who worked like Boxer of Animal Farm, thinking all would be better if she only worked harder...my mother, with the great laugh and the ready smile for anyone, for everyone, who took care of you when my father died, whose generosity of spirit, and generosity in general, you could never have dreamed of possessing...I see her face fall, that still youthful and beautiful face...one of a grace and a blessing that could not find a righteous place within your countenances...like Mother Mary...hailed...full of grace...blessed as was the fruit of her womb...holy, to me...and I feel unspeakable things...unspeakable things...I, so aware that I have a ticket to board a train one day, too...I, a sinner, a fool, one of the broken-hearted, who still has the grace to know I have won more than lost, whatever the trials, a thief who has taken from the stores of God because I am human and I want and I need...and I miss my father...I miss my father...and I love my mother...I do...I do...
...and I will pray for us sinners now...I will pray for you...
Amen and All, I do mean ALL, Aboard...
