Magical memories of a just-in-case man

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 06/11/2023 (1027 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

My daughter-in-law texted one Saturday with images of metal cutters, wondering if my late husband, Mendel, might have had anything like this in his collection.

Like him, she is a fixer; when Mendel was alive they shared an appreciation for Canadian Tire, Home Depot, Rona — the dream palaces for DIY humans.

I looked through the snips I had stored in the back hall closet and took a picture of the three that seemed as if they might do. I texted the photos, telling her I would go into the garage to check out the remainder of Mendel’s just-in-case warehouse.

She texted back with a single word: “Poland.”

The name was perfect for Mendel’s garage holdings; he was a second-generation Holocaust survivor who had emigrated from Poland with his parents and the just-in-case motto they held fast to: they were aware of the importance of being prepared for contingencies, even as they were deeply aware that preparation in itself might not be enough.

Throughout his life, Mendel carried the just-in-case stories of his parents’ losses: their murdered prewar partners and children; the futile attempts to survive within the antisemitism alive in the streets of postwar Poland; the determination to find peace and security for the new family they had created together after desperately trying to find their prewar families.

When Mendel died, my cousins and my grown children and partners went through his office papers. For a man who prepared for any emergency, real and imagined, the one thing he could not ready himself for was his own impending death. He had been sick for more than two decades. Even as he struggled with a failing second kidney transplant, he insisted on an attempt to file his tax return. He would never surrender. His love of life, whatever the odds, transcended the insurmountable realities of his chronic illness.

After his death, we could find all the pieces of paper he’d saved — records of every transaction, every purchase, every manual for appliances that had long since departed.

Ironically, this documentation did not yield his will, funeral directive, passwords, bank accounts, or the contact information stored for the array of handypersons and companies consulted and/or hired as part of some 40 years of home maintenance.

Mendel had taken care of life’s practical and foundational elements. I delighted in those gifts. I had taken care of other quality-of-life dimensions: dreams, atmosphere — the moods, colour, shape, and texture of our family’s life. We achieved a perfect balance and without him I was unmoored.

By some trick of fate, however, at the 11th hour, I did find a single piece of paper entitled “Important Information for Deborah” and a copy of his will. Both appeared on my desk in a bright red file folder.

I did not put the folder there. I had never seen it before.

I believe in magic.

Apart from the will and the single piece of paper with still-useful knowledge, we were left with garbage bags full of receipts and invoices that had been carefully filed in his desk, in his study closet, as well as the ancient and broken devices I had earmarked as refuse that he had artfully hidden from view in the garage.

Over the years, the garage section of “Poland” has become famous: the innards of broken machines, wiring, bolts, nails, screws, netting, scraps of lumber, strange baubles and bits whose purpose I could not decipher, tools whose single merit seemed to be that they were old and rust-worthy, others in better shape, some having been fashioned by his father, also a fixer of legend.

After Mendel’s death, I would receive calls/texts from my son, my daughter-in-law, friends: “Do you think that Dad/Mendel had…” And, of course he had. Saved for the just-in-case.

When I hired a professional to haul away some of the “junk” no longer needed as part of Mendel’s home-hemodialysis set-up — cupboards for supplies, a recliner he would not part with, in such rough condition it was rejected as a giveaway, various bins and boxes — the man standing in the garage assessing the “junk,” marvelled at the collection and the overstock: five shovels, seven broom handles, all manner of strange weights and locks, a machete, suitcases the size of double beds, ancient skis and hockey bags, 1960s work boots.

He nodded his head, for he had seen such collections before.

In the winter of 2022, I had become adept enough through the five years after Mendel’s death to note that a roof with a deep blanket of snow could create all sorts of problems during a spring melt. I had the water marks and rotting wood in the back hall as a reminder of earlier leaks, and so I called someone who might be able to assist.

The man who came asked if I had a special snow-removal thingamajig he might use. We went into “Poland.” I did not know what I was looking for, but he spotted them. Two roof rakes. Just in case. Because a person can never be too careful; because a home ought to be well fortified and protected; because a family’s survival depends on that kind of diligence and attentiveness.

I keep these two thingamajigs in “Poland,” in full view. I look at them often. I need them, but not only because of snow buildup. This remarkable just-in-case man understood — as so many whose lives have been in peril, whose diaspora families have been menaced by hatred — what it might take to protect and provide for a family in the possibly different and newer world they had been given the chance to love.