Life (as i know it)

Jigsaw

Jigsaw

"Grandma, who's that? In the picture?" I asked, pointing to the framed black and white photo sitting on the book shelf in her room.

She looked, turning from the table with our jigsaw puzzle left scattered and half formed.

"My father," was her simple reply.

"Fred Eli?" I asked. His last name was my namesake. My grandmother is an only child and her father's family name would have died when he and his wife did. So my parents named me Eli to keep the name alive.

"Yes," she answered. I stood up and picked up the picture frame.

It was of a handsome man in a tuxedo, with thin wire framed glasses and a smart looking haircut. He had a bold chin and well defined cheekbones. His nose was long and straight and his eyes were pale silver in grayscale, but I knew they must have been clear blue. A family trait. He looked, very much, the gentleman.

"How old was he?" I asked returning the frame and turning back to our puzzle, scanning the haphazard pieces for matches. "I mean, when he passed away?"

"Oh..." she thought for a moment. "Ninety-two or ninety-three."

"He died of natural causes?" I wondered out loud.

"Uh-huh," she answered. She was leaning on the palm of her right hand, her left sifting through colorful pieces. "When he passed away he lived in a retirement home and across the street from the retirement home was a nursing home. My mother was living there at the time. On the night before her birthday he went over to see her -they were very close always- but he didn't have a birthday gift on account of living in the retirement home. I think he passed away that night because he felt so bad he didn't have anything for her."

"Wow," I mumbled dumbly. "I'd never heard that story."

We worked for a moment on the puzzle in silence. In the lull, I managed to piece together three or four dark pieces with flower petals, but I wasn't sure where they went.

"Did he grow up in Ohio too?" I asked after a while of finding nothing.

She smiled and nodded. "Uh-huh. He and his two sisters grew up all their life in Ohio and he became an accountant. My family lived in the same house that he grew up in as a child. When we went to visit Ohio in 1997," she continued, referring to a family vacation we had taken when I was very young, "they said that the part of town the house was in had gotten pretty bad. I'm not sure if they meant dangerous or they just didn't want to see the house that way...maybe both."

I noticed another picture behind a row of dusty books. I got up again and carefully removed it. "And this picture? Who is this?"

"His sister Ahna. But she spelled her name A-H-N-A. She was a librarian in Ohio. He had one other sister who became a school teacher."

I could see the resemblance between Fred and Ahna. The same eyes, same dark hair, same face shape. Her hair was done up in a more traditional early 1900s cut. Shoulder length and held back by a large headband.

"She was pretty," I said sincerely. "I wish I could have met them. They sound like incredible people."

"Uh-huh," she replied. Her attention appeared to be on the board, but I couldn't help but wonder if her mind was elsewhere, putting together her own jigsaw puzzle of memories, fitting each remembered detail, piecing together faces that I could only know in photos.