You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
As I sat down for breakfast with Zaida on the last day of my visit to Philadelphia to assist in his caretaking, he grabbed my hand and looked directly into my eyes. “So what do you want to know? What have you never asked me that you've always wanted to? I'm an open book!”
I stared back for several seconds, caught off guard by his level of self awareness that the end was near.
“Do you have any regrets?”, I asked.
His shoulders slumped, eyes welled up, and he turned to the window overlooking the grocery store they now lived near.
“Nothing. You know, The beginning of my life was hard. And my only goal was to rebuild the family I never had. I found a job I loved, a women I loved, and had three beautiful children. I don't have one regret.”
Among the many gifts Zaida gave us all, this type of perspective, I believe, was the greatest. A gift made even more clear after I had been rummaging through an old file cabinet hoping to find his will the day prior, and encountered an empty manilla folder labeled “family search.” I was in awe.
With every reason to be mad at the world that had broken him down to the lowest of lows, he hugged back harder.
This was what shaped his work, relationships with his family, and how treated the stranger on the street.
A staple of all Zaida's relationships with his grandkids was the pre-dinner chat. About 30 min before dinner, Zaida would grab his scotch and then your wrist and say “lets sit down and chat. I want to hear about you”.
These are my favorite memories. We talked as friends. Any filter I would have had speaking with another adult ceased to exist and I'd catch him up on the past 6 months. The good, the bad, the challenging. He was there for it all.