Jack

[copied from dland]

Jack died this morning. He had a heart condition for over 20 years, and a whole host of other ailments, as befit his 83 years. Even so, my first reactionwas, and still is, surprise.

I had planned to write so much about him, and even started another diary for it, just about him. I wanted to get more of his stories before I got going onit, but now I'll have to go on memories. That's okay, too.

He told me once that in all his life, he'd never had a dream in which he wasn't a little boy, playing marbles or riding his scooter. He never dreamed of anything in his life after the war, never dreamed of Shirl or my sister or me or even the grandchildren. It must have been some way that his subconscious mind protected him from remembering and dreaming about the war and all he saw there.

The how and why of today is pretty strange, I guess; that's a story for another time, too. I was in the car with K, driving back home (we were about an hour away when my sister called on the cell phone to tell me), and so we had that time to talk. Mostly, we talked about where he is now. Pretty funny, since he himself was an agnostic, and didn't believe in any kind of afterlife at all, although I seem to. So we were picturing him in all the possible places in heaven he could be.

He could be a chubby ten-year old, playing baseball in the schoolyard next to his house in small-town New England. He played badly, he said, but he always played. Or he could be at the Y, learning to swim. He might even be at Fenway Park. A neighbor boy, a few years older, would take him on the train to see the Red Sox play.

He could be in high school. He was handsome, and a little bit of a flirt, and a good student, although not as good as either of his older sisters. He was an officer in the Cadet Corps, and hung out with all the cool kids, even though he was Jewish and nobody else was.

He might be in college, the first in his family to go. He had a very good time in college. He was an officer in his fraternity, where he learned to drink beer, although he never liked it.

He might even be in the army, although he wouldn't be in the Huertgen Forest, the worst combat he saw. Maybe it would be when he got to see Paris, or Brussels. He would be laughing with George Johnson, his best buddy.

I think he's spending some of his heaven time with Shirl, who died last May. But he's not seeing her that way, sick for years and sucking all the life and energy out of him. He's with the Shirl he first knew during the war, when they met and then married. In Jack's heaven, Shirl is still bright and sweet and really built.

He's not 75 pounds overweight, or bald. It's not hard for him to walk, or remember. He's still a hunk.

His children are little girls, his business is just starting out. He goes into the office every morning and talks over last night's ball game with his partner, Murray. Murray died two years ago, so I know that Jack is spending some of his time with Murray. They were partners for over 45 years.

He bought his house in the suburbs, and bought into the American dream he helped save in World War II. This is my favorite picture of Jack and Shirl ever, in the backyard. He might be mowing the lawn there, or burning the leaves. No, he's shoveling the snow. It seems like he was always shoveling snow.

It's most likely that he's someplace with his grandchildren. He loved them best of all.

He hated having his picture taken (so he won't be doing that), but there was nothing AT ALL that was better for him than his grandchildren. So he might be playing with them on the floor, all of them babies together, or at the July 4th barbecue, or at Thanksgiving.

He won't be wearing a tie, because he didn't like that at all. He only got dressed up for weddings and such, like this one, where he posed with both grandsons. He did not smile for the camera.

At least, until later in the evening. He was, after all, sitting at a table surrounded by all the people he loved. Two daughters with husbands, and five grandchildren. And of course, Shirl.

Where is Jack in heaven? He is playing ball, and having milk and cookies at his mother's kitchen table, and at a school dance, and drinking with his fraternity brothers, and walking hand in hand with Shirl all around Manhattan before he went to war, and talking football with Murray, and buying a house, and teaching me to read or tell time, and playing with his grandbabies, and giving rolls of quarters to his grandchildren, and sitting with them at the Thanksgiving little table because he didn't want to sit apart from them, and telling stories about all of it to all of us, and even letting his youngest grandchild take this picture of him for her photography class because she asked him to.

Now he's in heaven. Now he's dreaming about us.


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