Two Candles

 My sister posted this on Facebook:
Twenty years ago today my cousin Chris died. Morris Rabinowitz who loved me more than my own father died too. Both of cancer.

Christine Peterson Dolezal

Chris was a fun person.  We used to party and I would go camping with her family.  She was more of a sister than a cousin. (In fact all of my cousins are more like brothers and sisters than cousins.)  Chris made good friends and kept them. There are people today who miss her just as much as her family does.  She married Tom Dolezal who first saw her dancing with me in a local pub (bar) and wondered what that beautiful woman was doing dancing with that ugly guy...(Well he actually never said that but it was probably in his mind.)  I think that is why he decided to date her and eventually they married and had two beautiful children. So I take credit for them getting together.

Chris was a teacher and taught school as they moved around from place to place eventually landing in Minnesota where she volunteered at a Nature Center and helped many many youngsters discover a love of nature.  I remember her at the cabin in Minnesota on Leech Lake, swimming, excursions out to Sandy Point, going out to eat, walking the trails or just sitting and looking at the lake.  I also remember the time I told my mother we were going to McDonalds for supper and then took her to Newton (about an hour away) where they lived and where we met my first cousin once removed Amy who now lives in Texas and who has two beautiful kids of her own.

I also remember that after Chris had Amy she was in a restaurant and some jerk was using the N word.  Chris marched over to him and reportedly say to him.."Listen here, I would rather have you use the word F**K in front of my child than that word,  she had courage, especially when it came to her kids.  We had so much fun with Chris and Tom.  One winter Mom and I went up to Minnesota to visit them for a long week-end. We got caught in a blizzard. Well not really a blizzard but a whole lot of snow and were snowed in the entire week-end.  We had a blast, playing cards, joking and just being together.  Good times.

Cancer took Chris at far to young an age. That year was one of the hardest Christmas seasons we as a family ever had and I am sure one of the reasons that I am not fond of this time of year.  Chris's memorial was used at the Nature Center where she volunteered and taught.  Later when my mother passed we used her memorial money for a teaching station at the center. 

I don't have a photograph on hand of Morrie.  I have a feeling that Ginny has them all.  Her statement about him loving her more than her own father was accurate.  Morrie and his wife Maryjane and her parents and we used to get cabins together at the same resort where my aunt's had their cabins and trailer. Our cabins were right next door to each other and we played cards, went swimming, baked bread at all hours of the night. We ate together and became closer than Family.  They visited us and we visited them.  

I never heard Morrie say a harsh word to another person.  He was one of the kindest, funniest, most caring, loving people I ever knew.   He loved dogs.  They had two, a Chihuahua and a St. Bernard.  the Chihuahua ruled the roost from a warm baby blanket. Morrie held her all the time and if some of the rest of us came near her there would be growls.. Mojo however loved all of us and thought he should be a lap dog also. Fortunately I had large enough lap that he could use it.  So there was Morrie with the little dog and me with the big dog on our laps. 

Morrie was a Jew and his wife was a Catholic (still is) and her folks (who came to the lake with them) loved him as if he was their own son.  One of the neatest things was the Menorah which they got him.  I think they found it in an antique shop.  It was brass and they worked to polish it so that it shone.  I can still remember the excited gleam on his face and the joy when they gave it to him.  One Thanksgiving we were up at Ellsworth to visit them and the Menorah was sitting in the bathtub. Maryjane made him (or he did it on his own) put it there so the candle wax would not get all over things.

Morrie was a teacher also and he was probably the only person of the Jewish faith that the folks in that little town knew but he was loved and liked by everyone and was a Teacher of the Year. 

Both of them died on this date 20 years ago, ten minutes apart.  It was a double whammy for those of us who loved them.

Last Sunday I was watching Bill Moyers.  He had the poet James Autry on it and this poem and conversation touched me and seems appropriate to end this post with.

"Disconnected."

How could I have explained to the woman who answered that I'd dialed not to reach her but just to dial that very number as I have so many times before to hear it ring once again and remember for a moment a voice I'll never hear again?

Have you have on your telephone any telephone numbers of people who've died? I do. And I just can't erase them. 

Can't.

JAMES AUTRY:

Then he went on to say:  "The whole idea of a presence with an absence. That we carry those people with us. You know, they live on through us. My brother, for instance, was a great card. And he'd, when we'd start to drive onto a highway where there's a yield sign, he'd just suddenly in an English accent say, "Yield. I shall never yield." So he's with me every time I see a yield sign. So that's the presence within the absence that I try to capture in some of my poetry."

So tonight I light two candles in remembrance of Chris and Morrie. I carry them with me.  

I was correct - Ginny had the pictures of Morrie. I ad them below.

You can tell by the smile what kind of guy he was!

Morrie, Ginny (sister), me, Mom, Mary Peterson, Maryjane (my other sister)