In Memory of an Unknown Cousin

 1.

They took you on a German day,

Europe still under its clouds.

You, who were certainly my cousin

however many times removed,

were removed from passive neighbors

still in unbombed houses, by night;

you were going to live and work and play

somewhere in Poland, they said.

2.

A scientist, a cook, a movie star,

a balding neurotic, or my son's teacher

(he hates him)--fifty years later

up from a nightmare, I wonder,

smoke, what you would be? Black

coffee. Morning's ritual begins. Again

water comes out of my shower, not gas;

I have no right to write your eulogy.

ll.

Fifty years later? You can tell that this poem was written long ago. It is now eighty years after the Holocaust began, a hell that still seers this old man's mind.  It occurred several generations ago, a great-grandfather's lifetime ago, yet we forget those times at our peril. Is jack-booted hate rising from the ashes of the past? I wish I could be sanguine; instead, I am scared.

The poem first appeared in a magazine, The Other Side, that is long since defunct. I better change the subject or I'll need an anti-depressant.

lll.

The poem was written in memory of a fictive cousin. My real cousin, the only one I had left, died yesterday. His name was William Dorsett. He passed away, I'm told, comfortably in his sleep on January 15, 2022.

Well, I guess I have the right to write a eulogy for him. It is, however, another eulogy for an unknown cousin, for we only had minimal contact in the past sixty years. 

Bill was born in September, 1940, a few days before my brother's birth. His namesake father and his mother, Ceil, had a second child 1n 1944, a boy named Richard; I was born a few months later. Soon tragedy struck: Richard died at about one year of age, from (perhaps) meningitis. My uncle Bill and my aunt Ceil took it hard and decided to move out of the area. They moved to Kirkland, Washington, a suburb of Seattle. There they remained and there they died.

They visited us often, at least for a while. I remember as a young lad waiting on our porch in Jersey City, waiting for their arrival. They drove cross-country and had just called to tell us their arrival was imminent. Our family sat on the outside steps of our house, located at 163 Congress Street in Jersey City. which my grandfather purchased in 1949. (He and my grandmother lived on the ground floor; my father, mother, brother and I lived on the two upper floors. There was no separation between us; we had the run of the house).

There were about a dozen steps on the outside of the house which led to our family's entrance on the second floor.  We could use the downstairs entrance as well, the door to which was located behind the outside stairs. Under the stairs was a huge coal bin--we heated the house by coal in those days. I remember crawling into it on several occasions and tossing lumps of coal about in the dark. I couldn't have been more than six years old.

There we were, my mother, father, my brother and I, arrayed on the front steps awaiting the arrival of the West-coast section of our family., circa 1956. After waiting an hour or so, I remember thinking, "I thought they were almost here. Where can they be?"

They arrived. I almost still can hear our shouts of merriment.

My Aunt Ceil was a stout woman who stood about five foot five. She was very sensitive about her weight. I remember one time, during a later visit, we took the local bus to New York City. We were in Central Park on a beautiful day. My bother wanted to snap a photo; Aunt Ceil made sure that her torso was hidden by the nearest tree. She thought she was too fat to stand full-bodied in a picture that was sure--in her mind--to cause embarrassment! This was well before our current let-it-all-out age; she wasn't obese at all. Aunt Ceil was adopted as a child from an orphanage in Finland. Whatever Finnish she had  known had long since been forgotten.

My Uncle Bill was slightly shorter than my father and stood at about 5' 7''; he was not overweight. He was a jolly sort; as an example of his humor, I remember him telling us that his wife 'had been vaccinated by a Victrola needle.' No, he couldn't have made it as a stand-up, but he was a good man.

My cousin Bill was tall, smart, lanky and high-strung. His parents loved him, but often--especially his mother--criticized him a lot. I think she expected perfection.

Every December for several years, we looked forward to receiving a box of Christmas gifts from them in the mail. I suppose they looked forward to receiving ours as well. I don't remember what any of those gifts were, but I sure remember that they had been lovingly and colorfully wrapped.

Cousin Bill and I corresponded for a while. Now that I think of it, I'm sure Aunt Ceil made him write to me--how else could you get a fifteen-year-old boy to write to his ten-year-old cousin? In one letter, I made a reference to 'Mow-Mows.' Somewhat later I received a reply in which I was informed that both he and his mother had been greatly amused by my misspelling of 'Mau Mau,' a reference to a Kenyan secret society bent on expelling Europeans from Africa.  Funny how some things stick in your mind despite so many things that have been forgotten!

In 1960, my mother and I took a trip to visit them in Washington state. (My mother wailed softly as we went over the Rockies in a propellered plane. She thought we were going to be 'sucked down into the mountains,' she later told me. This was the first plane trip for both of us.)

Our relatives had a small house surrounded by an acre of greenery. We had a good time, but most details of our trip remain a blur somewhere in my mind. One often recalls only emotionally charged events, and this trip was no exception. On one occasion, we were climbing down a hill in a national forest. It was a very hot day; my mother got overheated. While she lay on the grass to recover, I can still see and hear my aunt chewing out my poor cousin  for not having watched  over my mother more carefully. On another occasion, while visiting Mount Ranier, my uncle suddenly felt ill. He pulled the car over. Cousin Bill, then about 19, volunteered to take over the wheel. He didn't get very far. The car bucked and shimmied a bit, then came to a stop. (Perhaps my cousin forgot to disengage the emergency brake?) Well, Aunt Ceil yelled at Cousin Bill and wouldn't let him drive farther. I can still see the disappointment on my cousin's face; I think he wanted to show off his driving skills, poor guy.

Cousin Bill had developed a prominent nervous tic by this time, which included twitching of the mouth and eyes. Let me repeat: Aunt Ceil was a good woman, but could also be a stern critic.

Well, 1960 was the last time I saw Cousin Bill in the flesh, though we remained in periodic contact.

He contacted me about ten years ago. He had found an article in a German magazine that had to do with a sad event in the family. Another first cousin of mine had been shot down over Germany in 1944. He was the gunner of a bomber. He apparently survived the crash with a broken leg but didn't survive the war. What exactly happened to him we do not know.

When my uncle was informed over the phone, he apparently shouted, "Junior's been killed! Junior's been killed!"  I was born shortly after that terrible war was over.

I translated the article for him. We had a long and pleasant phone conversation at the time.

After that we lost contact again. 

Cousin Bill spent his professional life at a hospital in Regina, Canada. I'm not sure, but I think he was responsible for ordering technical equipment. This, I do know: he was quite intelligent.

I don't know how I knew, but Bill had been engaged to a woman with two children in Canada. It apparently didn't work out; Bill remained a bachelor until his death.

Another cousin--my father had been the youngest of nine--kept in contact with Bill. I talked with Cousin Jean many times. She was about to arrange a visit to the NBC Studios in New York, where another first cousin, David Dorsett, had been the chief cameraman for David Letterman for years. But the visit never occurred; Cousin Jean, who never smoked in her life, had contracted cancer of the lung and soon died from the disease. (She had told me that the doctors didn't want to aggressively treat the tumor, since she had become old and 'would probably die of something else.' Indeed.)

Jean had told me that Bill had become obese and a bit of a recluse. He died alone in a nursing home in Kirkland. Sad.

My wife's family, of which I am still a part, is large; mine isn't. I had been trying to contact my cousin to reconnect; I am ashamed to say that my attempts, however, were minimal. I didn't know about the nursing home until I had been informed of his death on the day after his passing. Strange to say, but I had been trying to find information on him online on the day of his death. I had a feeling that he was no longer with us. Unfortunately, I was right. 

The sketchy life of my cousin I have provided indicates that he was also an 'unknown cousin' like the one in the first poem. After Bill's death, I composed another "In Memory of an Unkown Cousin" which follows:

In Memory of an Unknown Cousin

                                      --William Dorsett (1940-2022)

 

1.

A peach shares its secret--

Misquoting a more famous

poet and pediatrician

I take communion from the fridge

and eat it in Bill’s memory—

The peach is delicious;

so juicy, so cold.

 

2.

Hope our shared genes 

expressed our shared humanity:

before you left, I hope you knew

what I know now: despite the pit,

life and death are exquisite,

inexplicable and whole

as an ordinary peach—

Last first cousin, rest in peace.

Thomas Dorsett, January 2022