Well, there have been no adventures to report. I was a terrible agent before David died, and I was completely MIA after he died. I moved hurriedly from our 4 bedroom house into one room that was a short drive to work, and moved all of Jack's paintings into very expensive storage where they remain abandoned.
I have been writing this for months, and Patti's last blog entry pondering the influence one's friends have on their kids, prompted me to finally finish this. Here are some of Jack's paintings in our old house:
Aunt Lil was my mother's best friend. She was married to Jacob Pell, my Uncle Jack. Aunt Lil had lots of siblings and friends who were also my aunts and uncles. These aunts and uncles were also best friends of my mother and her brother, Uncle Irving. Irving was the hub that kept us connected. I looked up Lil simply because over the decades Irving was always asking me if I had called her yet? I finally called her when David and I moved so close to her that it had really become ridiculous not to.
It was a joyous reunion for her, and I was amazed to learn that she resented my father because he refused to keep in touch (all my father's friends complained about this), but I had moved away when I was so young I hadn't realized I left people behind wondering about me. No wonder Uncle Irving was always asking me to call her. Duh. She immediately followed complaining to me about my father with getting angry at me and asking me why I had refused to let her have my mother's menorah as a remembrance? I was mortified. I had no idea or memory of what she was talking about. Apparently, she had asked me on the day of my mother's funeral if she could have my mother's menorah and I said no. I told her I was just a cranky little girl, my mother had just died, you should have just taken it and not asked me (this also brought to mind how horrid my own niece was to me on my wedding day when she was 4 years old and I didn't get over it until I was in my 50s when David looked askance at me and asked me, "how old was she at the time?").
I asked Lil to describe the menorah, and I looked for it among my things. I didn't have it, but I had seen one in our household growing up, so I described it to Irving to see if he had it. He didn't, but knew where he could get one just like it. He did, and sent it to me. I presented it to Lil with a little red bow on it, and she looked at it and said, "what's this?" I asked her, isn't it the same as my mother's menorah? "No!" I still have that little menorah, because it reminds ME of my mother, and now it reminds me also of Uncle Irving.
Some years later I finally had the good fortune to meet my Aunt Jeanette, who told me she was my mother's first friend in the new country. They were 12 when they met in school to learn English. I hadn't known about her because she had left New York (moved to Detroit) before my brother and I had met her. But the bond I felt to her was instant, and I mourn that I only had her for a few years before she died. We all loved her. She was a family event, and became my brother's mother-in-law. This was all because Uncle Irving had kept in touch with her all those years. The whole gang had known Jeanette, and she knew the gang, but us kids hadn't known about her at all. And my house always resembled Aunt Lil's house, although I hadn't seen her for decades after my early childhood. So, yes, you are influenced by those that love you, even if you don't know they love you.
When Jack died I helped Lil catalog the paintings. When Lil died, I was surprised to find that none of his blood relatives could tell me what would become of them. I was concerned about some paintings in their garage getting badly damaged. Aunt Lil's biological niece (another sort of "cousin") was unconcerned about the paintings, and wouldn't let me go into the garage to get them. She did, however, deign to let me take home bags and bags of plastic bags Lil had. Hey, I'm glad to recycle. I didn't buy plastic bags for a decade.
David and I wondered about the paintings for a year or so. Uncle Jack has a famous nephew (star on Hollywood Blvd) who dropped by with his sons and a VHS camera one day shortly after Jack died to video the paintings and interview Lil about them (I have since gotten it converted to DVD). I figured he had a mansion someplace with room for all of Jack's paintings, and wondered if he would claim them?
Meanwhile, as the months went by, it occurred to me that after Lil died, Aunt Irene, Lil's younger sister, was all alone now, and I should call her and find out how she was doing? I discovered in talking to her that she was the heir to the estate, had the paintings in storage and had known for months that I had wanted the paintings, but just hadn't done anything about it (having dealt with them after David died, I now know exactly how she must have felt). Her son, a retired lawyer, typed up a simple one-page agent agreement we both signed, helped me and David get them out of storage, and voila! I was now the agent for the Pell estate.
David and I loved having the paintings, so we at least fulfilled Lil's wish - she wanted the paintings enjoyed and on people's walls, not stored in museum basements. We had great plans for selling them once we moved to Deming. (David dropped dead just a couple of months before we were headed off to retire in Deming, New Mexico, where our friend owns the major art gallery). But I worked full-time, didn't have much time to think about them, and didn't really know where to start. I made lists of collectors of his work and galleries that had exhibited his work. I took a few pictures. The most attention those paintings got was from a film crew that filmed in our house. They went through the entire bin of his paintings, and packed up the ones framed in glass so expertly we left them that way, knowing they would soon be moved, so we never took pictures of those. They're still that way in storage today.
So, over a year passes after David dies, and I finally start to think about those paintings and realize I'm never going to do anything with them. So, I decided to resign as agent, but for some reason I felt uncomfortable contacting Irene's lawyer son who I had signed the papers with, I really don't know why. I would have preferred to have talked to Irene, but she had moved away to be near her other son, Danny, and had become so hard of hearing that phone conversations with her were basically impossible. Emailing her was also impossible. It's hard for her to type. She used to forward me jokes, but now she doesn't even do that. I had emailed Danny a couple of times inquiring about Aunt Irene, so I sent him an email asking if he could ask his mother how I can go about resigning?
Well, Danny and I ended up in a deep email exchange that just wowed me, starting with his polished diplomatic air in the way he responded to my complaints about his brother! He basically told me "not to pick on his brother you big bully" in a way that made me feel just wonderful (and truthfully, I adore his brother - he's an odd duck like me)! And he was so understanding of my situation, he was just a jolly good fellow. I felt so relieved. Danny is another "cousin" that I hadn't seen since we played together when we were 5. I would hear about him and his wife, Yeda (and his brother, too, and his brother's kids that I just love, but who I also haven't seen since they were teenagers). And I'm sure Danny heard about me and David and my brother in the same way over the years. But we really in all that time hadn't connected with each other.
Danny sent me a "linked in" request and I discovered he had a blog! He started his first blog around the same time I started mine, and wow is he ever an interesting guy! His blog explains where his almost magical ability to negotiate and communicate and soothe comes from, and I found it to be a great read (although I skipped over some political and technical details and explanations). It is called "The Visionist" and can also be found under the blogs I'm following.
Enjoy!
