Dear Hearts,
April 25th is the 151st anniversary of the birth of Wanda Frances Zinn: daughter of Josef Zinn and Antonina Grabska, born in Gdansk, Poland on 25 April, 1873. She died in Chicago of the Spanish Flu, during the epidemic of 1918. She is my great-grandmother.
She is Boompa's mother, and he spoke softly of her, with wistful and luminous memory as being beautiful and exceptionally gentle, known for her gentleness, and her gentility. This was a great contrast with her wild husband, Alfred (Snaz) Wilkoszewski, later Wiley. She was Wanda Wilkoszewska after they married.
Wanda raised her six sons and one daughter with that high standard of civility and decorum, dignity and gentleness typical in Polish families, despite the unknowing jokes.
Boomp once told me that he came downstairs on the morning of September 20, 1918, got his lunch pail from his mother, kissed her goodbye, went to school, and when he came home, she was gone and he never saw her face again. She had died of the fierce, killing flu during the day and the health department had to take her body away. She is buried in Resurrection Cemetery here in Chicago.
Boomp was 14 when she died. He never closed that book, and I know he had trouble expressing sorrow forever after- sadness used to hurt him so much he would duck it and make diversions. Just moments before he died, on July 12, 1994, at age 90, he sat up, opened his arms and said, "Mama. Mama." Then he lay back down and died peacefully. Maybe she brought him in and she was there to bring him out. He was the last of the seven siblings to go, and she must have been waiting for him, knowing that the little boy's heart had been wrenched and broken.
Please watch over us, Wanda Zinn Wilkoszewska, Great Grandmother, and lend us your gentleness.
God bless us and save us and keep us from harm.
Love,
Seamus the Older
