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middle
initial. He was present in the faces of her sons as they
grew to manhood, as well as in the faces of the granddaughters and
grandsons who came in due course. Present
but not present, like
someone who has died; but
we all knew he
was indeed
alive and well and absent by choice. Esther
lived without apparent bitterness or anger toward her ex-husband.
Where today we
might see vindictive court proceedings, Esther simply lived --
steadily, even-handedly. You see it in the pictures she took
of her sons: Here
is Chester in his 1937 Halloween costume, and here is Alan in his,
both costumes brand new and handmade, each boy posed in the exact
same spot in the yard. Equal treatment. Here are the boys together
atop a Civil War cannon at Gettysburg battlefield, in matching
handmade outfits and caps. Here are the boys with the neighbor
kids and adult
friends who undoubtedly comprised for Esther what we today would
call a support system. Later, in wedding pictures, she is the lone
parent on the side of the groom, but not at all incomplete or self-conscious
next to the mother and father of the bride. And still later she
is the single grandparent taking her grandchildren to Gettysburg
and
Colonial Williamsburg and Salem, Massachusetts. It never seemed
that anything was missing despite the fact that something indeed
was.
Esther
never told the story of her marriage and divorce to her sons
and daughters-in-law;
her friends who might have known the details never spoke of them, and, like
Esther, are now long gone. We grandchildren
knew, instinctively, that the subject was
not up for discussion. Whether raising it would cause anger or open old wounds
we did not know. It might just as likely have been a non-issue. In any case
it was edited out of the family story despite its real existence,
like text red-lined
out of an early draft of a novel. There but not there, like our grandfather.
We’ll
never know why Esther maintained this silence or what motivated her to
get on with her life the way she did, but of course we speculate.
We might
surmise that Esther moved ahead out of relief, thankful beyond thankful
to be rid of a lost cause of a man. Or that she acted out of
a sense of revenge
that
manifested itself in complete and utter competence that says “You
can’t
hurt me or anyone I care about, no matter what you do or how hard you try.” Or
perhaps she anesthetized herself through focused action.
Any
of these would be plausible, but as I study those old photos
again I more and more come
to think that Esther found in herself a deep ability
to
forgive,
a kind of forgiveness that most of us never have need to employ. A way
of forgiveness that enabled her to put the father of her children behind
her
and move on with
a grace that would not have been present in actions taken out of relief
or revenge or numbness. I think the grace that marked her actions is
the key
to understanding
her story.
This
year it will be thirty years since Esther died, too young,
at seventy. Her former husband lived twenty-eight more years.
Two or three years
after her death,
he dropped in on the family of the younger of Esther’s sons--my
father. A subsequent visit by our family to his home upstate was an
uncomfortable, unnecessary
coda to a relationship that had never existed. He solved no mysteries,
answered no questions. With nothing but genetic context in which to
think of him as “grandfather,” playing
the part of the grandson was out of the question for me. His choice
to refuse the role of father and grandfather was definitive. I bore
him
no ill will,
but if Esther had in fact forgiven him that would have to be enough
for him.
Esther
means “star.” When we look up into the night
sky, we know the stars by their shining. Memories of Esther are bright
in my consciousness
and reinforced when I look through the old photo albums. Her
boys grew into good men who stood with their wives and families through
thick
and thin for fifty
years and counting. That’s not a unique accomplishment, but it
is something that cannot be done without the ability to forgive and
forgive and forgive. When Esther died she left very little of material value, but her legacy
of forgiveness
lasts. The apple, as the saying goes, does not fall far from the tree;
I can only hope to live up to the trees from which I have fallen. Copyright © 2004
by Michael Wilt
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