Every year on All Souls’ Day, Nov. 2, I head to church with my list of the dearly departed, which includes relatives, neighbors and friends. These days I can’t help but notice the list is growing ever longer, but at the top there are always the same two names — my parents.
Remembering them on this day dedicated to the souls in purgatory helps me cherish memories of the two most important people in my life.
There was Gracie, who was born to Italian immigrants on East 120th Street in New York City, and who graduated from Hunter College — which was quite an achievement for a woman of her time. She became a schoolteacher and one day met her handsome Tommy, whom she went on to marry.
As a child, I had no doubt that she was the most beautiful woman in the world, and so my earliest memories have me trailing her around the house, praising her and proclaiming my undying love.
She was a perfectionist, the kind of person who chases down every dust mote, makes her own manicotti dough, sews and knits, and irons a mountain of clothing.
During her summer vacations she pulled out all the stops, scrubbing screens and jalousie windows, and tearing the house apart from top to bottom. I’ll admit there were times I hated the fact that my sister and I were routinely enlisted to help her on her mission of keeping the cleanest house in the world.
Still, she was my biggest fan from day one.
If my poem got published in the school newspaper, she insisted I read it aloud when company came for supper. Later, when I was teaching college, she would lovingly preserve copies of my course outlines and present them to her friends as if they were priceless trophies.
And no matter what secrets I told her, about hidden crushes and heartfelt fears, she comforted me.
Things were a bit rocky with my father. He was quite an old-fashioned fellow, born of Sicilian parents in Greenwich Village. After his own father died, he dropped out of sixth grade and got a job to help support the family. When he married my mom, he didn’t have a well-paying job, so she worked for years as the main breadwinner.
Ours wasn’t a “Father Knows Best” kind of family by any means. My father was the strong and silent type who occasionally erupted in a volcano of anger, usually if one of the kids spilled milk on the supper table.
I think in his heart of hearts he had yearned for a son, but when the Lord sent him daughters, he did his best to navigate our world of movie magazines, moodiness and mascara.
In all the years I knew him, I only saw him cry twice. The first time was when my sister, then 18, got married and went to live in Turkey for a year. The next time was when he and I took a cruise together after my mother’s death — and at some point it hit him that she wasn’t on board and he would never see her again.
I pray for my parents every Sunday and doubly so on All Souls’ Day. Some people might say there’s no need to pray for them any longer, but I like to cover the bases.
After all, God’s time is not our time, so just in case they still need help on the way, I’m here for them.
Besides, prayers are an eternal code for the words I first heard on the lips of my parents and the words I still say to them in my heart — “I love you and I always will.”
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