Celebrating Life

Since 2003, the month of June has, for me, been a reminder of my grandparents’ deaths. Every year, I find myself marking the anniversary of their departures from this world and thinking about how their passing has impacted my life. My Pap passed away a week after I graduated high school and his death marked the beginning of a difficult transition into adulthood. My grandmother followed twelve years and two days later, making me realize that I no longer had a single grandparent living, and that I had taken their presence for granted. To this day, I still feel their absence every time I drive by their old house, eat traditional Slovak food, or hear Unchained Melody on the radio.

And while June has been emotionally significant for me in a negative sense, I'm only recently realizing that it doesn’t have to be. Because June was significant for my grandparents for other reasons – reasons that I’ve always known but for some reason have been overlooking for more than a decade.

June was also a month for celebrating life -- they were both born in June and got married in June. It was a month for family, for fun, and for love, celebrating three important events often at once as they were in such close succession – June 7th, June 15th, and June 16th marked Gram’s birthday, Pap’s birthday, and their anniversary.

So instead of thinking about the pain and the difficult changes their deaths brought to my family and my life, I want to try to focus on celebrating their legacy.  Both of my grandparents were children of Czech immigrants. They grew up with little to no luxuries, living in small homes and sharing and ethnic food with over a dozen brothers and sisters between the two of them. They met when they were thirteen and fourteen, married in the early fifties, and raised five children in a house full of love and Czech phrases and curse words that are still muttered by surviving generations.

Some of the best memories from my childhood and teen years were listening to them tell stories about growing up in the aftermath of the Great Depression, exploring the then-open fields of West Mifflin where Gypsies roamed in the summer, and finding buried treasure in what is now Kennywood’s parking lot. I loved hearing them talk about their immigrant parents, mimicking the Slovakian accents with fondness. My grandma often told funny stories that came along with raising five children, and my pap had plenty to share when it came to him working in the steel mills that put Pittsburgh on the map.

I remember spending countless nights sleeping over in their big, old house, watching Gram make homemade nut rolls, pierogis, and chicken noodle soup, and watching Pap tend his giant garden and fiddle with the antiques he collected and occupied most of the basement and attic.
I remember the warm, bright days that were unmistakably June - a month for celebrating Father’s Day, attending graduation parties, and going to Kennywood picnics. The amusement park always held a special place in my pap’s heart, as he and Gram spent many nights dancing under the old band shell and squishing together in old-fashioned photo booths for black and white pictures.
June was a month of sitting at picnic tables, eating barbecue and cake, splashing in Gram and Pap’s Koi pond, getting dirty playing in their yard, climbing trees and swinging on the swing set. It was a month for celebration, full of love, and full of life.

So as June circles by on the calendar again this year, I’ll try not to cry over their absence, but smile and laugh as I celebrate their beautiful lives.

Stacy is a 2003 graduate of West Mifflin Area High School and has completed two courses with The Institute of Children’s Literature. She writes novels for teenagers and adults, both of which can be found on Amazon. Stacy lives in Munhall with her husband and fur kid, and besides writing, enjoys reading, Penguins hockey, and traveling.