My Grandfather

            The mysteries in my family’s past are not things that are too far for me to reach; my maternal grandmother still speaks of her father and grandparents as if they are still alive, making them feel almost like old friends to me.  My mother’s side of the family has an intimate connection to the past, with an abundance of storied family relics and well-researched genealogies.  My aunt made books of my grandparents’ stories, detailing their childhoods and adulthoods with pictures and articles.  In short, that side of the family’s tame, polite, Midwestern heritage has already been examined and worked into everyday life through the voices and items of the family.

            My father’s family, however, is silent.  Perhaps it is because they are a more stoic people, less prone to gossip and chatter; perhaps it is because the skeletons in the closet are more numerous; perhaps it is simply because they would rather allow my generation freedom from the burdens of the previous one.

            Despite the plethora of intrigue, madness, illegitimate relatives, and scheming that have been pushed away by that side of the family, I am most intrigued by the simplest mystery: my grandfather.  I know little about him; he died when my father was nineteen and about to graduate from high school.  The dead are not spoken of on that side of the family.  Their presence is acknowledged with pictures and occasional mentions, but these are not things to be pursued, as the past should be buried.

            I know that my grandfather was a very big man, much like my own father.  He was also quite strong; his favorite trick when he was in the army was to go into a bar and get people to buy him drinks by lifting a heavy bar stool by one leg.  He was a doctor, and his old patients still visit my grandmother’s apartment from time to time; before he went to medical school, where he met my incredibly brilliant eighteen-year-old grandmother, he served in Europe during World War II.  He was Jewish and passed the faith along to his children, despite his wife’s Catholic heritage.  He took his children on “vacations” where he and my grandmother sailed to impoverished areas on a ship with other doctors to treat people with little outside access to medical aid.  He died mysteriously overnight in a hospital after being presented with a clean bill of health and told he would be released in the morning.

Together, this is the total of what I know for sure about my grandfather.  Together, this presents a fascinating life of a man who I can just barely glimpse through hints from my family: a serious, authoritarian man, but deeply caring and with a sense of humor, progressive enough to support his wife’s pediatric career yet continually haunted by his days in the army.  To write his life, to try and “meet” this man who shaped so much of my family but who I will never actually know, would be a wonderful opportunity.