|
AN IRISH EPIPHANY In 1904 my widowed grandmother, working as a maid in Chicago, had saved enough money to pay for passage for my mother and her older brother to emigrate from Ireland when my mother was ten years old. My father emigrated from Sicily with his parents and five siblings about the same time. They were married in 1917. After my father died in 1939, my mother went to work to support her four young children, and worked until she was 80. My mother emigrated from Ireland to Chicago in September of 1904, when she was ten years old. That year John Synge published The Playboy of the Western World, one of my favorite plays. I like it especially because Synge captures the ethos of my mother's kin, with their odd mixture of ignorance and wisdom, fear and courage, truth and falsity, wit and banality. His singing poetry reminds me of how my mother had the Irish peasants' gift with words. The performance of Playboy caused a riot in Dublin on its opening night, apparently because it portrays Irish men as shiftless cowards and Irish women as domineering. Pegeen Mike, the strong, indomitable, heroine reminds me of my mother. My grandfather, Ed Walsh, died of consumption around the turn of the 20th century. He left my grandmother, Kate, with four small children, Peter, my mother, Mary, Luke and Ed. When my grandfather died Kate preceded her children to Chicago, where she worked as a maid on the West Side. She finally scrimped together enough money to arrange with a distant aunt to escort my mother with her older brother, Peter aboard the ship, Baltic, to Ellis Island and thence to Chicago. Economic necessity dictated that the two youngest boys, Luke and Ed, remain behind with relatives in Ireland. In later years my mother would relate the story of her first impressions of Ellis Island. They were detained there for medical surveillance for a few days, because her aunt was blind in one eye. A black matron in a white nurse's uniform cared for my mother. My mother had never seen a black person before, nor had she seen a crisp white uniform. The kind matron gently cared for the frightened children, and my mother never forgot her. As an Irish peasant, she thought that the woman was an angel. For a long time after that she thought that all angels were black and wore white uniforms. My father, Tomaso Quattrocchi, was born in Termini, Sicily in 1890. Termini is a small town about twenty miles from Palermo. It is situated across the Tryrannean Sea from the Aeolian Islands. There are seven Aeolian Islands, a few of which you may have heard of -- Vulcano, the home of the god Vulcan; and Stromboli, made famous by Ingrid Bergmann some years ago. The largest of the Aeolian islands is Lipari. The highest peak on the island is a place called Quattrocchi. It is so named apparently because of the four panoramic vistas that can be seen from the Belvidere. My name, Quattrocchi, means "four eyes," "Quatro-occhi." The top of this small mountain is reputed to be the home of Aeolus, the god of the winds. This is the place where Odysseus stopped on his way back to Ithaca from Troy, and also where Aeneas stopped on his way from Troy to found Rome. From the Quattrocchi Belvidere on the island, on a clear day, you can see the city of Termini on the northern coast of Sicily. When my wife, Carolyn, and I visited there for the first time, I finally felt less envious that she could trace her heritage back to the 17th century Virginia Colony and from there to a 15th century castle in Scotland. I like to fantasize that my roots go back to Homer. I have a picture here of the view from the top of Quattrocchi on the island of Lipari. My father with his parents and five siblings emigrated to Chicago in 1900. From those distant outposts on the European continent, Termini on the coast of Sicily and Kiltimagh not far from the West Coast of Ireland, my parents met at a dance hall on the West Side of Chicago sometime around 1915. In 1930 my parents moved with my two older brothers to a four-room apartment on the South Side. I was born there in 1931 and my younger sister in 1936. My father died in 1939, a day before my 8th birthday. My mother lived in the apartment for the next 30 years. After my father died my mother went to work for a chain of dentists, The Boston Dental Company. The main dental office was located down town in the old elegant Morrison Hotel. It was the nub of about 30 offices spread out in all the neighborhoods of the city. But the company began a rapid decline when the founder died. My mother worked until she was 80. She missed work probably no more than two weeks in thirty-five years. She outlived all but a few of the dentists in the company and retired without a pension in 1980. At that time there remained only one office in a black neighborhood at 63rd and Halsted. My mother enjoyed telling stories about the various dentists with whom she had worked and the mostly black patients whom they treated. She would laugh at her recollections: for instance how she told a black patient the story about the black angel who had cared for her on Ellis Island, wearing a white uniform. He laughed at the story, but thought she was making it up. Chicago is one of the most segregated cities in the United States, due in part to greedy landlords who play on racial fears. My mother lived in the apartment for 35 years. The neighborhood eventually became black. She had no objection to living in the black neighborhood, but she had to move because the new slumlord raised the rent. Sadly she had to move three times in the latter years of her life because the landlords would invariably raise the rents with the changing demographics. She loved life and she loved people; she had not a prejudice bone in her body. She had an eye for the ridiculous in everyday life, but was not bothered by inconveniences that would make most people raving mad. I remember one story in particular. She was almost 80 years old but did not mind commuting to work. One evening during the rush hour, returning from work on the 63rd street bus, she encountered an unusual delay. When the bus pulled up to a stop at 63rd street and Ashland, the driver exited the bus. After five or ten minutes, the passengers became increasingly irritated and boisterous. They cursed the driver, the Chicago Transit Authority, the mayor and anyone else who could possibly be blamed for the delay. Some gave up and exited in disgust. Finally the driver returned with a box under his arm. When a passenger demanded where he had been, he casually replied that he had gone into a store down the street to pick up his new suit. This explanation did not appease most of the other paying riders, who continued their ineffectual grousing, but it amused my mother. She reasoned that the poor fellow probably needed the suit for a late date, and the store would be closed when he finished his shift. As she exited the bus at Pulaski, she smiled at the driver with a comment, "I bet it's a good looking suit. Enjoy your date." My mother's youngest brother, Ed, never left Ireland. He was raised by a severe dirt-poor disciplinarian uncle and never learned to read or write. Fortunately, he married Mary, a good, literate woman who bore him eight children. Mary corresponded with my mother for 50 years. Every year they exchanged Christmas and St. Patrick's Day cards. Then one day my mother sent a letter to Ed and Mary Walsh, Irishtown, Knockadoon, County Mayo, Ireland. It was returned with the cryptic postal notice that the addressee no longer lived in Irishtown. She assumed that her brother had died and no one had thought to notify her. We learned years later that when my Aunt Mary died suddenly of a heart attack, Uncle Ed had moved to England to live with his daughter and her husband. My cousins had in fact sent a notice to my mother of my aunt's death and Uncle Ed's subsequent move to Birmingham, England. Their letter was also returned with a cryptic postal notice that my mother no longer lived at the old address in Chicago. She had moved in one of her migratory flights in the ever-changing conditions of the South Side. By 1980 I had left my teaching job at Ohio University, because I could not afford to raise our five children on the salary of an Associate Professor of English. I had been trading here at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange long enough to make enough money to take a vacation to Europe. In March my wife and I took our four younger children to visit our oldest daughter, Carolyn, in Italy, where she was spending her junior year at Northwestern studying at the University of Florence. Besides visiting Florence, we made two pilgrimages, one to my father's birthplace in Termini, Sicily, and the other to my mother's birthplace in County Mayo, Ireland. When we planned our trip, my mother decided to try again to send a letter to the old address in Irishtown. She apparently reasoned that one of the relatives might have returned to the farm. And she was right. Uncle Ed had lived in England for several years but had returned to the old farmhouse in Ireland. He came with his second oldest son, Ed, and his wife, Sheila, when Ed retired from working on the railroad in London. My mother's letter arrived a month or so before our planned visit. My cousin recounted the story of their surprise and elation to receive the letter and to learn that my mother was still alive. And what's more they were to be visited by American cousins, whom they had never met. When the postman trudged up the dirt road to the old Walsh farmhouse, he looked curiously at the envelope from the United States and announced in a tone of incredulity, "By Christ! I haven't seen that hand in ten years." We stayed in Ireland, lamentably, for only three days, after a whirlwind skate through Rome and Florence, in Italy, Palermo and Termini in Sicily, and Quattrocchi on the island of Lipari before arriving at Shannon Airport on March 17, 1980. From there we rented a compact Ford with the steering wheel and stick shift on the wrong side of the car. I mastered the tricky machine and the narrow roads for the five-hour drive north of Shannon to the Castlebar Inn. The refined St. Patrick's Day festivities in the Inn that night differed markedly from the drunken, boisterous Irish bluster to which I was accustomed from my formative years in the saloons on the South Side of Chicago. While relishing our dinner in the elegant Victorian dining room, we could see and hear the freshly scrubbed, radiant young girls dancing the Irish reel in the adjoining room. After dinner Carolyn shepherded our four children back to the room while I reconnoitered the bar. We needed directions, for we only had the address, Irishtown, Knockadoon, County Mayo. County Mayo showed up on our map but not a trace of Irishtowm or Knockadoon. I ordered a pint of Guiness and scouted for a friendly face that might point me the way to Irishtown. It wasn't long before I had engaged a half dozen patrons in discussion about the best route to get there. None was without an opinion, but neither had any one a convincing notion about where the town actually might be located. The sober patrons seemed genuinely sorry that they could not locate the town in their memories, but those with a few more pints under their belts would not give up on trying to figure the best route. I concluded that none of my volunteer navigators really knew the way. After an exhausting day and my fruitless inquiries in the hotel bar, I resolved to tackle the problem after a night's sleep. Next morning I hit on the brilliant idea of trying to determine if my cousin had a phone. Accordingly I asked the hotel operator how to locate his number. She said she would put me through to "inquiries" in Claremorris, a town some twenty miles from our hotel in Castlebar. To the "inquiries" operator I asked for the number of Ed Walsh in Irishtown, Knockadoon. Without another question she replied: "He doesn't have a phone, but what would you be wantin' with him?" I identified myself as his cousin from America, trying to find my way to Irishtown. She seemed pleased to be aware of this bit of local gossip. She couldn't connect me with him, but she assured me: "I'll tell him you're commin'." Then she gave me directions to a village called Balladine, the widest spot in the road above Irishtown. We departed the Inn confident that we were closing in on our final destination. Entering Balladine, I pulled up to a pub, the first open shop on the road. I didn't even have to open the door. My cousin, Ed, stood in front waiting for me. Even though we had never met, now in late middle age, we immediately recognized one another, because we even looked alike. After greeting Carolyn and the children, he led us out of Balladine through the even smaller village of Irishtown and followed a dirt road beyond to their modest farmhouse. Irishtown is a village of perhaps 10 or 15 houses, a church, a general store with a gas pump in front and five or six pubs. The farm was about 5 miles from the village. My uncle and cousin-in-law, Sheila, were standing in front to greet us. My Uncle Ed, then 80 years old, was almost a carbon copy of my mother's younger brother, my uncle Luke, then twenty years buried. Ed, whom they called Ned, was a gentle, large, handsome man. He wore a peaked cap that only partially covered his shock of silver hair. His gnarled hands and ruddy complexion betrayed his long years as a laborer. He resembled my mother in looks and in manner but not in verbal agility. Their modest house was clean and warm, a cozy nook fueled by a peat stove, out of the chill March west wind blowing across the beautiful but bleak Irish countryside. They had a couple of cows and raised a few crops, mainly potatoes. My cousin Ed, a city guy like me, had lived in London most of his life. He tried to teach me how to cut the long meadow grass with a scythe, but I couldn't get the hang of it. He wasn't much better. We stayed only a day, but it conjures up several lasting impressions. I sensed immediately that, as a visiting cousin bearing a gift, a bottle of Jamison's Irish whiskey was an inappropriate choice. The bottle pleased my uncle but not my cousins, Ed and Sheila. Uncle Ned, like my Uncle Luke, apparently had been afflicted with the Irish curse--the propensity for strong drink--but he had at that time in his life sworn off, motivated undoubtedly by the urgings of his children. They had motivated or coerced Ned to swear off the bottle but allowed him a drop on special occasions. And our visit qualified as a special occasion. We drove around the county to visit the many places associated with my mother's girlhood. We passed through the village of Hollymount, where Ned prevailed on his son to let him take me into the town pub. Escaping the blustery March wind, we entered the dreary Hollymount establishment. About ten young blokes huddled around a peat fire to ward off the bone-chilling dampness. I immediately attracted their attention as a Yank and took the occasion to play the part of a Chicago politician. I asked around whether anyone knew the Walshes in the neighborhood. "Oh, sure. It's a common name," one said, and the others smiled and nodded in agreement, but none could recall faces or facts about a particular individual named Walsh. But I felt welcomed from their collective response and ordered drinks for the house. Never before have I realized such an immediate return on my investment. Everyone in the pub raised a glass not only in my honor but also in honor of all the Walshes, of John Kennedy and of all the Irish in America. Uncle Ned beamed with approval of both my presence and my reception by the patrons, all younger sons or grandsons of his old friends. After a few polite pleasantries, we smiled all around. Ned and I made a swaggering exit. The drinks cost about five dollars, but I felt like I had showered manna from heaven on that Hollymount pub. On the ride back to the house, my uncle, a man of few words, repeated several times, " I liked the style of it. They don't often have free drinks like that. It was grand style," a compliment I frequently recall whenever I feel chintzy about buying a round. On the way home from the pub we visited a few sights around the village of Irishtown and the neighboring village of Kiltimagh, my mother's birthplace. We searched in vain for my grandfather's unmarked grave in the cemetery near the church she had attended as a child. It was supposedly near the big oak tree, but by then it was overgrown and unmarked. The most poignant and typically Irish event of the afternoon occurred when Ed took us to visit a crude farmhouse. A young bedraggled boy approached us on a road above an old ramshackle house. My cousin greeted him with a familiar diffidence. Then he whispered an aside to me that the boy was the son of a distant relative, identified only as Martin. The boy escorted us down the road to the door of the house. Martin came to the door and abruptly greeted us without evident pleasure. A short, round, taciturn man, with an oval face and balding red hair, he reminded me of Squire Western in Fielding's Tom Jones. He exchanged local news with Ed and the current prices for potatoes and cows. I thought it strange to be talking in the doorway for several minutes without being invited into the house. After a few awkward silences, we bid Martin good bye. As we walked back to the car, Ed explained that Martin apparently was embarrassed to invite us in, for his sheep inhabited the living room, for what reason, I cannot now remember. I think it was either to keep the sheep warm, or the sheep to keep the house warm. That evening we called my mother from our hotel in Castlebar, where we had taken the family for dinner. Ned was excited but nervous about the call. He had rarely talked on a phone and certainly never on a call to the United States. When I connected with my mother and beckoned him to the phone, he held the receiver as though it were a fragile piece of china. But he screwed up his courage and talked to his sister for the first time since she had left Ireland 76 years before. Or rather she talked, and he nodded into the phone. He grunted an "aye" or "nay" every now and then. As tears welled in his eyes, Carolyn and I had a shared an EPIPHANY. We felt such joy and emotion that we decided right then to return to Ireland with my mother to visit before one of them died. And that we did the following September, 76 years to the month after she sailed for America. In September of 1980 my mother was 86 years old and my uncle 80. She had been on an airplane only a few times and had never been out of the United States since leaving Ireland. Surprisingly she weathered the transatlantic flight better than either Carolyn or I. She was chipper and loquacious when we arrived at the Shannon airport. I rented a car and choose a different, scenic coastal road from the one we had taken when visiting in March. I took a leisurely route so that she could drink in the sights of the country along the western shore. For years during my childhood she would describe the details of her circumscribed habitat as a child. She could recall her vivid memories of leaving the village of Kiltimagh as a young girl to be with her mother in the country that lies beyond the mountain. The mountain she had etched in her memory as a child I realized was a molehill on the horizon beyond Kiltimagh. Now that we were on the road to recreate her girlhood memory, she apparently forgot the dream. She had become acclimatized to Chicago and wasn't much for looking at scenery. From the moment she nestled herself into the front seat, she began to talk without interruption. She recounted the plot of an old movie, Random Harvest, that she had seen about 9 times. Annoyed by her seeming obliviousness to the momentous occasion, I said, "Damn it, Mom, look out the window. You're home in Ireland." She demurred for a few miles and obligingly looked out the window and commented, "how lovely are the flowers." But soon she returned to her monologue, this time recalling old tales about her girlhood. My mother shone her brightest on that trip. When we arrived at the house, we were met not only by her brother, Ned, cousins Ed and Sheila, but also by two of my other cousins, and their three children, all of whom had come over from England for the reunion. We immediately sat down to tea and soda bread, and my mother held court, recounting past incidents in such detail that they were amazed. She could remember tidbits of their childhood from her correspondence with their mother. She remembered persons and places from her childhood that Ned could not remember. She told him, for instance, how Aunt Bridget died, and the fairies came to take her away. She recounted the story of the death of their father, Uncle Ed's namesake. Because he died of consumption, no one would come near the house. Bill Hughes, a neighbor, finally stepped out of the crowd surrounding the house and took the coffin to the cemetery. My mother mixed facts with myths in her stories, and my cousins reciprocated with their stories. We spent a festive day there in the little farm house, with the Dunnion girls dancing Irish reels, the women sipping tea, Gerry Dunnion, Uncle Ned and I nipping on the Jamison whiskey. Cousin Ed had taken the pledge never to drink alcohol and was drinking tea. But he told a number of Irish stories with good cheer and sober accuracy. One in particular I recall about the holy shrine near their farm at a place called Knock. Apparently the Virgin Mary appeared there to some Irish children in the last century. A large basilica has been built on the spot, which attracts visitors from far and wide. Even the Pope visited there on one of his peripatetic excursions. Naturally they sell all manner of religious articles, including pint-sized bottles of holy water, called Knock water. Ed told the story of a friend who took a trip to the continent carrying a pint of poteen (pocheen). Pocheen is the homemade Irish equivalent of vodka. A custom officer stopped him and asked, "What might you have in the bottle?" "Knock water," the fellow replied with apprehension. The officer opened it and smelled it suspiciously. "Doesn't smell like Knoch water to me," he said, "smells like pocheen." The poor frightened fellow feigned astonished disbelief and proclaimed, "By the Holy Virgin, it's another miracle." Next day we took my mother to Castlebar to visit Nora Kelly, a cousin of Betty Burke, my mother's friend in Chicago. Nora was an affable, charming woman. She greeted us effusively in her three-room flat, near the center of town. We felt immediately at home, for Nora was no better housekeeper than was my mother. Bric-a-brac from floor to ceiling filled the small, constricted rooms. The good widow lived with her son. He had just come home from the hospital where he worked nights as a nurse. When we arrived about 10 A.M. Nora offered tea and soda bread for Carolyn and my mother and a touch of whiskey for me. I was not accustomed to drinking hard liquor before noon, but I could not refuse such hospitality. She served me a shot in a Waterford glass extracted from beneath a pile of dishes on the table. I drank to her and to her son's health, to her cousins, the Burkes, to my cousins, the Walshes, to the repose of the soul of John Kennedy and Pope John XXIII. We had a swell time at Nora's house, mainly giving her news of her cousins in Chicago. She felt obliged to give us something to take home as a memento. While we were talking, she sent her son out to buy me a bottle of Irish whiskey. When we departed she gave me the bottle of whiskey and the Waterford glass to my mother as a souvenir. My mother had never owned a glass quite like it before. She didn't realize that it cost more than a set of dishes she could buy in the basement at Wiebolds Department store in Chicago. After a day or two, Carolyn and I left my mother with her brother at the farm, she talking and he listening, while we visited Dublin. He would sit in his rocking chair, smoking a pipe, nodding recognition of incidents in her narration. He was six years younger and didn't have her gift of gab. He could not remember most of her stories. He would simply nod in wonderment and occasionally turn to us with a twinkle in his eye and mutter, "Isn't she grand? How amazin' is her memory! " We had a delightful interlude in Dublin. We attended the Abbey theater. We visited James Joyce's famous turret and a book exhibit at Trinity College. We were surprised to see the Book of Kells on display and a fine exhibit of Joyce rare texts and memorabilia. Surprisingly we were the only viewers in the library, except for a stooped old woman in a plain dress carrying a shopping bag. Carolyn struck up a conversation with her and praised the wonderful display of Joyce material. The woman beamed with obvious national pride. She seemed to take a renewed interest in the books and asked Carolyn in a matter of fact way, "A writer, was he?" I could only mull over the truism that no prophet is recognized in his own country. We returned to Irishtown at the end of the week to find my mother and uncle both in the same postures. He rocked in the chair, nodding and smoking his pipe, and she was telling stories about the old days. Irishtown does not provide much recreation or distractions for tourists, except for Mary Freeley's pub. That was the port of call on the last Saturday night of our visit. It was an ancient hovel with a dirt floor, hardened solid by the foot stamps of generations of village imbibers. As we entered the front door, my cousin, Ed, with a twinkle in his eye, warned in mock seriousness, "mine the carpet now, that you don't trip." A general store in the front part of the pub stocked a smattering of can goods, candy, and curious odds and ends; string, light bulbs, and the like, but no superfluity. Mary Freeley, the proprietor, greeted us with civility and warmth. Older than my mother, she must have been about 90, but she could have been 100. A younger fellow about 85 who might have been her brother echoed Mary's greeting. Mary and her younger friend both remembered my grandmother. In 1930 she had come back to Ireland for the first time since leaving some thirty years earlier. Her visit sparked the memories of Mary Freeley and my mother. Even though they had never met before, they talked of the old days, almost as though they had known one another all their lives and had taken up an interrupted conversation. Mary talked about my grandmother's visit and how her cooking made a hit with the men in the village. In America she had learned to make pancakes, one of the memorable culinary delights I remember from my childhood. When she served up a plate of the pancakes to the local farm hands, they put each one between two pieces of bread and had "pancake sandwiches." The men in County Mayo had never tasted such a delicacy. My mother reciprocated with an account of the sequel of her mother's visit to Ireland. When my grandmother returned, all her friends and relatives came by to visit and hear tales of the old country. Neither my grandmother nor my mother drank hard liquor, except for a weak whiskey sour on festive occasions. But they both considered it a condition of their station in life that a male visitor to the house, like Bill Hughes, would need to "enjoy himself with a drop of whiskey." My grandmother had brought from Ireland a bottle of Powers Irish whiskey to serve on those occasions. Bill Hughes, the hero who had carried my grandfather's coffin out of the house many years before, was one of the first to stop by. She allowed him to break the seal of the prized bottle of Powers Whiskey and pour out enough to "wet the sides of the glass." And as he wet the sides of the glass, many more times, they exchanged stories of the "old country." When her cousin, Jack Jennings, showed up some time later the Powers bottle had at most a couple shots in the bottom. But my grandmother was resourceful enough to fill it half way up with a mixture of Schenley's Blended whiskey diluted with a little water. After Jack had had a few shots and beers, he thanked my grandmother profusely for remembering to bring back the Irish whiskey and exclaimed with obvious satisfaction and chauvinism, "Kate, I can't remember the last time I have had such a fine drink. They can't make whiskey here the way they do in Ireland." After our pleasant interlude with Mary in the front of the store, she took us back to the bar, where a goodly sized crowd of drinkers were warming up for Saturday night revels. I can not remember much about its physical appearance, except that it brings back memories of being in a cave, or perhaps a womb. But two points about her establishment brought out Mary's exuberant personality. She pointed to an old clock, standing large and conspicuous behind the bar. It was embossed with a picture of a train, and it must have been there since the first days of the railroad in Ireland, evidently an early example of Irish advertising. Occasional visiting antique dealers would offer tidy sums to buy it from Mary, but she would not part with it. She also expressed pride in how clean she kept the beer pipes in her establishment. Mary's pipes apparently had status throughout County Mayo as being reliably clean. Several customers confirmed the claim that Mary Freeley's draft beer and ale were the best, not only in County Mayo, but also in Galway as well. Having learned the benefits of a small gesture of beneficence in my previous outing with my uncle in the pub in Hollymount, I ordered drinks for the house. I received the same grateful response. One patron after another came over to shake my hand and ask whether I knew a relative of his in New York or Chicago or wherever. "My cousin Pat Mulrooney lives in Cleveland. Do you know him?" one would ask. "You're from Chicago," another would ask. "Do you know Michael Callahan?" I didn't know anyone mentioned, but I held out hope that I might look up a cousin or a friend if I had an address. I felt at home in Mary Freeley's pub, even with a name like Edwardo Augusto Michele Quattrocchi. As we exited the pub, I received the same high complement from Uncle Ned. "Ah, the style of it. You sure have the style." The next day we departed for the Shannon airport amidst tears and smiles. We all sadly realized that Ned and Mary would never meet again in this life, but their reunion enriched the lives of all our families. Our contact with our long lost cousins in England has continued to the present. After that visit my mother kept up correspondence with my cousins until the day she entered the hospital five years later. She went into the hospital the day before St. Patrick's day, five years after our first meeting with her brother in that out-of-the-way place on the day after St. Patrick's Day. He had died a year before her. They both survived in poverty and never enjoyed the luxuries to which we have become accustomed, but both indomitable spirits were hale and hearty up to their respective ends. And surely that reunion in the farmhouse 76 years after their youthful separation gave added solace to their last years. |