Good bye Uncle Mike

My grandfather's brother Mike passed away on Saturday. Their mother was Anella, the woman one of my restaurants was named after. He was born July 26th, 1927, and in a moment of life truly coming full circle, he died on his birthday at 87 years old. Below is an excerpt from his obituary, which does a great job of summing up his life in a few sentences.

Michael was a parishioner and an usher with Sacred Heart Church of Monroe and was a member of Teamsters Local #445 of Newburgh. He was Vice President of Mancino Trucking Company, Inc., the former President of Monroe Skating Paradise, a former member of Mombasha Fire Company, former member of Knights of Columbus Council #2079, and a former member of American Legion Post #488 of Monroe. He was a former Trustee for the Village of Monroe and retired as the Highway Superintendent with the Village of Monroe. Michael was a Veteran of the U.S. Army and served his country during World War II. 

Of course, an obituary only mentions the big stuff, the positions you held and places you worked and how many kids you had and which school you graduated from. It can never tell the full story. I'm sure he had dreams that were never realized and moments of beauty only he saw. In his 87 years surely his heart was broken many times and he took paths he later regretted. A life is made up of a million little moments, all colliding into each other and overlapping into a quilt of memories you have to reflect back on when you are older.  And perhaps this is what saddens me the most with my grandmother. Her quilt of memories is disintegrating everyday. It has decades worth of gaping holes.

I only knew my Uncle Mike as an old man (he was 53 when I was born, which for a kid may as well be 100) and always liked him. He lived two doors down from my grandparents on Elm Street in Monroe.  My grandpa and Uncle Mike's older brother Carl had the house in-between them and could be seen driving up and down the driveway in his car with his stick out the window. He was blind from diabetes and was permitted to pull the car up to the street. Not legally permitted, but apparently all the grown ups felt it was okay. As a little girl I knew to stay away from the driveway when Uncle Carl was driving.

As a teen I worked at a much loved deli in town, Monroe Bagels and Deli. Some of my uncles would come in for their morning coffee or a buttered roll in the afternoon, but Uncle Mike was the only one that tipped me, something that became a joke between me and my mom's brother. My boss at the deli Dave, seemed to know everyone, my family included, and I took mental note of how cool I thought that was. Many years later when I opened up my first restaurant I realized how very much like Dave I had become, in my work ethic and memory of all my regulars.

I will remember Uncle Mike as being funny and kind to me as a kid lying on his living room floor coloring while watching The Price is Right and as an awkward, bagel-slinging teen, grinning at his quarter tip. Rest in Peace Uncle Mike. I hope you are roller skating through heaven with a cup of coffee in your hand and a smile on your face.

East Mombasha kids

We were the kids of lovers. Of artists and painters and carpenters. Of adults with dreams we never knew, of lives we only saw parts of. Our parents were hippies and hunters and most of them smoked like chimneys. They went to work everyday and ate dinner with us each night. They chopped logs for our wood stoves and made us rake leaves til blisters decorated our tiny hands.

We fought with our siblings. We tattled to our parents and who ever else might listen. We fell asleep in the summer exhausted and covered in mosquito bites, greasy from Skin So Soft with hair smelling of citronella candles and firewood. There was no air conditioning, just a fan if we were lucky enough to get it.


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I mostly only use this space to write about my grandmother and my struggle with her slide into Alzheimer's. Yesterday I had the pleasure of having one of my childhood friends over to my mom's house for dinner. The Schernes and the Papagnis lived on the same dirt road for almost twenty years and we share a treasure trove of memories and stories of a childhood spent running through the same woods. Us children have all grown up and we now have families of our own. My mother is the only parent of the two families left and that breaks my heart.

I was driving away from my mom's house today alone when my phone rang. I glanced down and saw it was my mom calling and pulled over so I could answer it. She told me Maggie wanted me to come back. She really wanted to visit my grandma. So we hung up and I turned around and drove back and got my sweet middle child and drove with her to the nursing home, mostly in silence, thinking of the night before and how nice it had been.

A common theme with me lately seems to be the idea that life is going by so quickly. I see it in my children and how fast they grow. I see it in my grandma and her seemingly constant deterioration. I think about my life as a kid with a mixture of sadness and gratitude. All of it, my kids and my grandma and looking back on what was, makes me want to appreciate what I have now. I want these to be the days I look back on in twenty years and remember how wonderful they were.

Stay seated, hands inside the ride please

I don't care about anything anymore, she announced to me today. Deep breath, I told myself.

When I arrived it was nearly lunch time and I could see some of the residents had already taken their assigned seats at the dining room tables when I peeked in to see if she was there. She was not. I signed in and walked down the hallway, all the way to the end where her room is. Her bed was neatly made, topped with the quilt my aunt made for her, knitted from scraps of scarves and sweaters and holiday ornaments.  I walked back down to the nurses station and popped my head in the manager's office, a perfectly named woman: Dolores. She told me my aunt, the same one that knitted the quilt, had taken her up to the salon on the second floor to get her hair done.

Stepping off the elevator I could hear my aunt laughing and didn't have to guess which direction to go in.  My aunt and I helped the hair dresser take rollers out of a few of the ladies hair, and when everyone was brushed and hair-sprayed, we rode the elevator down one floor to have lunch. My aunt had gone ahead with Eileen, one of my grandma's table mates that I am particularly fond of. It was exiting the elevator when my grandma announced she no longer cared about anything. There's really not very much to say when she says something like that. I get it. This sucks and I don't blame her for not caring. Her moments of clarity are painful for her and for me.

During lunch Eileen declared that she lived alone and did not cook anymore, too much work she said, who can bother to cook for one person. Amen Eileen, I told her, I totally agree. My grandma told Eileen she wanted a cigarette. Me too, I chimed in. You smoke, Eileen asked my grandma, surprised. I'm 99% quit, my grandma told her. I enjoy this banter they have. It doesn't bother me, having the same conversation three times over soft chicken and strawberry ice-cream (no one wanted the pears for dessert, they never do).

There were moments in the meal that I felt a panic rising up, like I might start crying at the table. I always feel this way, slightly claustrophobic in the large room, this sadness that settles in when I look at her face. I push it down, but one day I'm afraid I won't be able to and I'll just start bawling in front of all of the blank faced old people.

I wheeled her and a friend of her's back to her room and reminded them over and over that no one was to try and get out of their wheel chairs. I put on The Young and the Restless and made sure the volume was correct. Okay, I said, turning to face both of them. Who's getting into bed?! No one, my grandma barked. Good job, I said, that was a test and you passed. Stay seated I said kindly but firmly.

A gentle kiss was planted upon her soft forehead and I left her to watch what the Newmans and the Abbotts were up to.