Going Home
My first school decades before I attended
A few years ago I sat on a plane next to a sixty year old man who was clearly distressed. His hands shook and his voice cracked with emotion as he left a message via his cell phone. He told the person who hadn’t answered that he didn’t think he could go on. When the gentleman hung up, I asked him what was wrong. He said he was on his way to Alaska where his adult son had passed away the day before during a dental operation. We continued conversing and I tried to be supportive. He was inconsolable, completely lost. I offered to give him the phone number for a client of mine, a minister who had lost his adult daughter unexpectedly several years before, remembering this client had once said there is no pain greater than that felt by a parent whose adult child has died. I thought this client might be able to offer some solace to the grieving man.
Thus when I flew to Ohio this past weekend to visit with Suzanna’s parents and attend her viewing, I expected to see great outpourings of sorrow. I had my pockets readied with tissues.
I’ve known Suzanna’s parents for twenty-six years. They are like a second family to me. I walked into the church, and there they were smiling, even radiant. They warmly received my hugs and condolences. I marveled at their strength in the face of such adversity. This is a family with a deep, abiding faith, who have accepted God’s will for their daughter, and believe she has returned to His presence and that they will see her again. I am sure there have been many tears in the last few days. I know they miss her. I know they feel the pain that comes when losing a loved one. Yet, they had a peace and assurance about them that left me inspired. I knew they were going to make it through.
On a lighter note, I had a few hours between the morning church service and the afternoon viewing so I drove around the neighborhood where I grew up. If one has moved from where they were raised, they should make a practice of visiting every five to ten years just to reconnect. There are hidden memories that resurface when you return to your birthplace.
I spent the first nineteen years of my life in a suburban village just outside the Cincinnati city limits. This is a town of tiny brick cape cods and wood sided bungalows, a blue collar village with bars katty-corner from the churches, ready to serve thirsty parishioners. A town whose citizens were mostly of Irish and German descent, predominately Catholic with a sprinkling of Protestants, and overwhelmingly white.
I did not grow up in a global village. So I suspect it was for this reason that up until yesterday it had never occurred to me that the street where my dad grew up, where I lived until the age of nine when we moved to a cross street one house from the corner, where I attended elementary and junior high, where I went to church, where several of my good friends lived, and where I worked at my first landscaping/window cleaning/car washing odd job, has a French name. LaBoiteaux. This might strike you as odd, but I can’t recall anyone I grew up with having a French name. They all had good German names like Deidesheimer, and Wulkotte, or proper Irish names. French was not taught in school. Only German and Spanish (cause Spanish was easier to learn than German). We certainly didn’t pronounce LaBoiteaux it like the French. We said La Boy Toe. To me, the street was named after a kid’s foot. It never occurred to me find out what it meant in French, until yesterday.
LaBoiteaux means “the box of” as in “la boite aux lettres” (mailbox). The street was presumably named after Peter LaBoiteaux who was one of town’s first settlers. The question is what was his original name. Clearly he shortened it. I can’t imagine anyone walking around France with a name like A-Box-Of. Everyone would want to know a box of what? A box of crackers? Matches? Candy? Who knows, but it must have been shameful. Why else would he drop it from his name.
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