Lucia
by
Vicki
I often wonder, who it is I am. I look in
the mirror sometimes and see my own face looking back at me and
then at other’s I see my parents, a cousin, and my
grandfather. My mother tells me I look just like Grandpa when he
was my age. I look deep within the eyes looking back at me, and
try and find the sadness that took my grandfather often into
silence, when he was watching out at sea, the times we spent at
the ocean. My grandmother told me he remembered. A past. A life.
Croatia. The family he lost. I don’t see it within my own
eyes, but I see it in his. It was a look. A memory, that I truly
believe made him who he was, and he could be no better man than
he had been.
I remember my father telling me a story when I was little. A tale of indifferences and of passion. A story of the greatest of loves that lasted their whole lives. Yet, it was a memory, an event that had existed in the generations that came before me in the family in which I grew up. It hadn’t happened to someone else’s family. It hadn’t been the thoughts and theories of someone else’s imagination. It hadn’t been words written down on paper for other’s to read. It had been two lives lived, two lives bound together by moments, and a time formed to become a past. Their past. The past of Luka and Jude Kovac. My grandparents.
My name is Lucia
Ann Kovac, the daughter of Nathaniel, youngest son of Jude and
Luka. I am a senior at Northwest High School, Chicago. My English
assignment for this semester was to write about my ancestors.
Family long past or those still living. Kinfolk whose lives
through the generations wove into mine. A clan of people, who at
times took different roads, quite often with questioning souls,
and wandering hearts. Ready and willing to step up to be heard,
to be the conscience of one’s mistakes, the praise of
another’s triumphs, a family whose love and friendship for
all they knew and knew them, embraced their souls with humanity
and humility.
It would be years into my life before I knew the story of how my grandparents came together. How worlds apart collided into one. How moments in their lives, made them stronger. How past tragedies, had closed them off to other’s, to where only their courage and love for each other got them through. It would be now, only two months after my grandmother’s death, and my grandfather’s one year earlier, that I truly know how they loved each other.
My own parents, loving, and gentle as they
were, allowed me the weekend to spend at my grandparent’s
house near the ocean. I knew the moment I walked inside, their
lives would live on in all us who knew them. I could feel it. I
could feel them. Their love for each other and for their family
was so abundant and so rich I felt deep in my heart of hearts
their bodies now lay rested in the ground, and their souls in God’s
great heavens, but their spirits, would follow us wherever we
went, and guide us to where it was we needed to be.
The first night fell, the breeze was a
little cold, and with the front doors wide open, I could see the
moon rising to meet the stars. Moreover, I could smell the sea,
and I swear I could see my grandparents dancing together on the
shoreline. My grandfather’s huge arms wrapped gently around
my grandmothers waist, her body rested upon his chest, their love
entwined, their hearts bound with every beat. Their lives lived
so deeply and dearly only for each other.
As the night flowed into the early hours of
the next morning, cuddled in front of the fire, I surrounded
myself with the lives of my family. Photographs and paper
clippings, and drawn pictures scrawled across the floor.
Treasured keepsakes kept to remember about times, and events that
shaped them, and formed them into loving parents, giving doctors,
and respected community members. Invitations of reunions to a
hospital they gave their time to, photos of doctors and nurses,
they reminisced stories with. Achievements and accolades of sons
and daughters who filled their hearts with pride, grandchildren
who took their souls to new heights of love. Records of first
steps, and firsts words were marked down. Pictures of family and
portraits of young lovers glued into albums, reflected two sweet
souls who took their vows of marriage on the same shoreline I
look out to now. The same wedding gown softly packed away in a
box hoped someday to be worn again by a granddaughter, who would
be as honored and proud as the mother before her was, to have
worn such a blessed gift of love.
As the night got away from me, and I could
just see the sun starting to rise out over the water, I found
myself lost in my grandmother’s journals. She kept them
almost her whole life. They were cherished mementos looked upon
and searched over for inspiration and direction by those who
loved her most. Read and remembered when courage was needed to
triumph and when hope needed to be found. I feel reading through
them; I only now truly know both of them. Who they were, and what
they did, and at times, what they had overcome, to be together.
Moments of hardship and heartache, and
happiness and silliness. Times spent on the causes they loved,
and gave to, and of the days they spent frivolous, in only each
others company, lost in the waves of the sea, and the laughter of
each other’s joys, and love. Reading through my grandmothers
journal’s, the pages rich with times and moments, in both
their lives, that changed them, and branded them, and made them
who they would ultimately become, were stained with tears of
those who had read them before me, and some of my own.
The pride well up in my heart by the pages
turned, and of the sadness they both overcame, to find one
another. Time would pass and they would spend their lives
together, and bore three beautiful children. Retire to a small
house by the ocean. Medicine and their time at Cook County
Hospital, remembered always, but no longer practiced. Therefore,
it would begin, a journey. A journey of two souls entwined. Where
two people would exist for each other. Where a vow had been
sworn. A pledge of solemn promise. Where friendship,
admiration, and love existed throughout the roads, paths, and
occasions in their lives. They counted on one another and guided
each other through the trying times, and the times when life was
just too hard to bear. Against all odds, they were to defy, to
defend, to fight, and to surrender. They often took long walks
along the shore; watched sunrises and watched them set, slept in
on some days, and talked away the rest. They sat on the sand,
wrapped in each other’s arms remembering the past that
haunted them and the courage that got them through.
I found a passage, just a couple of pages.
When you think of your grandparents, even your parents for that
matter, you think of ailing aged people who lives seem boring
now. They seem so wrapped up in doing right and being normal,
everything they did and achieved in life’s past doesn’t
seem real. You don’t think of them expressing high spirits,
and passionate souls, you see them setting curfews, and going off
to bed early, and you quiet often forget, their lives have been
lived, and in time so will have mine. In this small passage, I
truly saw a different side that masked my grandparents into
people I never imagined they were. Humans with their own loves,
needs, and desires. Human beings whose love and deep
spirited souls, created life.
Her words were of times she’d spent
with her husband and that of a husband who spent time with his
wife. A man and woman I knew only as my grandparents, comforting
and tall. An aging man, who bandaged my scraped knee. An older
woman who snuggled me warm within her gentle arms, when I was
sick with a stomachache. Who threw me on top of his wide
shoulders, when I needed to see over the top of the world. Who
lost her breath trying to chase me and my brother and sister
across the sand, when we stayed weekends at the beach house.
I forget, and we all do at times I suppose,
grandparents, where my age once. Grandparents, were growing,
learning, and living as I am. They were loved and losing and
grasping on to what hope was left in what was offered to them.
Her words were almost like they were of two people I didn’t
know. They didn’t seem real. It didn’t seem real. How
could two people’s lives be so entwined within mine, and I
not know this about them. Of what they had experienced and
enveloped within their lives. Of how together they survived, the
cruelty of one man hands, and the sadness of losing kindred that
I would never meet yet be so proud to know.
It is in this, my assignment, I learn. The
lives and loves of my grandparents.
****
I called to tell him I was coming in. It
had been so long since we had seen each other. Almost twenty-four
hours. I missed them dreadfully. I had never been this far away
from them before and if I hadn’t promised the hospital I’d
do a double shift, I would already be home in the comforts of my
husband and children.
Luka was home alone; Anya and Marcello
were staying with Kerry for the weekend. She had been a blessed
godmother, to both our children, and the dearest of friends, who
Luka took into his heart so deeply as I had done some many years
earlier. It was the first night we spent together, just two of
us, since Anya was born, six years ago. She was the splitting
image of her father. An angel. Marcello was more like me. How I
saw his father in him so dearly, but he was my little man, a
gentle soul, where pride already filled his heart for a sister
who was older but willing to accept a younger brother
wholeheartedly to the life she lived on her own with just parents
for three years. I would often lose myself in her eyes and
know she would watch out for him, my little man. At six, she
already took on things seriously, and courageously got herself
through them. Patience strong and goodwill proud, I knew my angel
would have good life.
I arrived at the summerhouse, near the
ocean, where my sweet husband was staying for the past few weeks
with the children. He expected me later, I’d had been
lucky enough to catch the earlier train, and he was surprised. I
could tell by the look on his face, he was pleased to see me. I
could only stay the evening. I needed to leave at first light. We
both knew instantly it would be an evening we would remember for
a long time. We took a walk along the shore, our arms wrapped
around each other, the cool water around our feet, enjoying the
silence, knowing no words needed to be said, we felt them, we
understood them. We understood each other.
The gentleness of him simply holding
my hand set such serene peace in my heart, and a quaint and
exceptional grace within my spirit. His soft gentle touch just
like heaven, I knew nothing sweeter, nothing more beautiful than
the tips of his fingers brushed over my cheek, when he swept my
hair from my face and kissed me on the lips. I could instantly
feel the intense fire in his touch. We watched the moon meet the
sky, and dusk begin. Nightfall summoned us both back into the
peaceful abode where those who housed within often slept and
dreamt and made love. Where family ties were bound too tight, for
things to never go back to the way they were. Where fights were
fought out, and tears were cried. Where laughter and love drowned
us, into the peace and serenity that surrounded us.
Love needed no consent between two
souls who were destined to be entwined for eternity and beyond. I
never imagine I could find the words to describe the feelings and
thoughts in my body, but when it came to my lover and my family,
but they flow freely from every pore of my being. The feelings in
my heart are so deep for a man who has surely been the salvation
within my life.
‘Luka,
my dearest Luka, please always know no matter how far we are from
each other or how many plane’s divide us, not for a single
moment in the life I take a hold of, or even after death, I will
ever stop loving you. I am a greater woman by having loved you. I
am a blessed being by having been loved by you. I know that
I will be able to always say that I will be blessed into our
heavenly fathers lodge having shared the best years of my life
with a gentle being, a loving friend, an eternal partner. You
will live in my heart and soul, always. I love you. Don’t
ever feel like you have to hurry, you don’t, I would wait
for you for an eternity. Love deepest, Jude.’
You decide to jump into the shower,
and try to convince me to join you but that comes later. I slip
into a soft cotton dress I bought special for the occasion. My
feet bare. I move quietly around the kitchen, finding what I need
as I go, listening to you sing aloud from the bathroom. Your
voice still takes me to heaven, even out of tune.
‘The sweetness stirred her deeper
than the deepest ocean. The complete wonderment took her into
deep silence, as she listened. The words dripped from his
lips as beautiful as she’d always known they did. He
always made it so easy to love him, and loving him took her to a
sacred place deep in her spirit, where a man existed, who showed
her long ago that even through the worst of what life was, hope
and love still existed there.’
The strains of melody swift from the
music box and the candlelight hugged the walls; it swam around us
as met in the living room. The fireplace set ablaze with burning
embers, to keep away the cool breeze from our flesh for when we
are naked. We took our glasses of wine and quenched our thirst. I
was a little nervous. I don’t know why. The night was like
so many I’d already known with you, special and beautiful
and I felt tingly with anticipation for what was ahead of us.
I try to calm myself, trying not to
show how much I want to take you right then and now. You look so
handsome and sexy. I hold out my hand and welcome you to me. The
touch of our flesh is electrifying. We look into each other’s
eyes and know what each other wants to say. Before words are
spoken, we kiss each other with whispered kisses, our lips barely
touching but promising more to come. God I swear I know what
heaven is like, when your hands take my face with confidence, and
you show me everything you feel with one simple lasting kiss.
‘Sometimes no words were said at all,
and they didn’t need to speak, to know what each other was
thinking or feeling. They didn’t need to say the words, it
showed, and it always did. The love and passion enslaved within
their hearts. They weren’t just husband and wife. They were
companions and they were friends. Soul mates whose oceans and
shores collided. Where moments were sealed, and intimacy rein.
Where they often delved into the pits of their hearts and fell in
love with each other all over again.
In their lives together, they survived the
moments where life tested both their weary souls so gravely. They
quite often took upon their hearts, the suffering of others, and
bared it with them. They prayed on bended knees for the salvation
of those who changed them from whom they had once been. They
weathered the storms that twisted and tangled the simplicity of
things into frenzy. Together and always, they granted serenity to
those who pulled at them and twisted and taunted them, and
plagued their every nerve and vessel into despair and desolation,
and came out stronger by it.’
Instantly I stop myself from getting
lost in your graces, the warm glow of the candles light embracing
upon your face, I see only perfection reflecting from it. It
promised you’d wait forever. You were without a doubt the
only man I truly trusted the most, there were others but no-one
like the gentle soul who helped give back my life. I could think
of no way I would have ever survived with out you protecting me.
Guiding my heart and spirit through the trail and tribulation
that had swallowed my life.
Your eyes reflect so more
honorability, my heart breaks. They very core of your soul burns
through my skin as you take me in your arms. We stand together in
front of the fire. We start with gentle wet kisses. Buttons were
slowly undone, zips taken down, no shoes to worry about. You
slowly turn me around and start to unzip my dress, kissing down
my back, softly your tongue teases my flesh, and you stop at the
top of my lacy underwear. You suddenly but with a gentle ease
turn me around and take me full on the lips, catching my breath,
our tongues searching, and our arms around each other. Our hearts
pounding. I place my hands inside you shirt and over your naked
shoulders and help it fall to the floor you’re half naked. I
can’t help but try and remember how to breathe, when I lose
myself in the beauty before me.
The fire ablaze, shines over us. My
dress falls to floor also, with the help of your fingers and my
enthusiasm to be naked with you again. I stand with only my lacy
underwear on, no bra, my nipples hard, and the touch of your hand
on my flesh sends a shudder down my spine, my thighs quivering.
You stand with only your underwear on. We pull each other close
and kiss long and hard. Our hands all over each other. A river of
passion flows straight through us.
My dark hair framed my pale face, but
not for long. You comb your fingers through it and pull it back,
my neck at the mercy of your lips; you nibble on my earlobe,
gently squeezing my breasts. My lips answer by kissing over your
chest, teasing your flesh with my teeth and tongue. You softly
moan. We look in each other’s eyes and lose ourselves in the
passionate spirits looking back. We are the only two people who
exist. Our family not thought about now, but never forgotten
regardless.
The moon lifted a little and lit up
the sea, but that was the furthest thing from our minds, as
without even thinking or even asking we both slowly take each
other to the floor. You lay me softly down on the rug, and lay
alongside me. I lay on my back, you on your side, your head
rested in your hand. With the other, you softly whisper it over
my warm flesh, teasing me occasionally with kisses. My lips beg
for more but you pull away knowing the more you pull away, the
more I want, the more I want, the more I get.
You softly tickle above my underwear
line, I can’t help but sigh, I try to catch my breath, but
it seems to waver, and your causing it and I am so happy you are.
My saint. My savior. My love. Your often smile and simply bring
me home, and protect me from the dangers and demons that was
sometimes life. Who bestowed upon me hope and faith when I couldn’t
sleep, when my soul was lost and the nightmares returned. You
captured my heart and spirit and bottled it into sweet bliss, so
I didn’t have to remember and recall the things that got me
down and the heartbreak that took me into despair.
I pull your lips down to mine. I want
to taste you again. The wine. Within moments, your laying gently
on top of me, covering me with your warm, wanting flesh, trying
so hard not to take me. You can’t imagine how long I’ve
waited for this. Your tongue pleasures me into sweetest ecstasy.
My hands touching all over your nakedness, feeling your warm
skin. My fingers become entangled in you hair, as your kisses go
a little deeper. Your lips tickle all the way back up my skin,
once again we are lost by each other’s wet lips. Our arms
draped around one another. I kiss my way down your chest; I can
feel you starting to stir. We look at each other, no words
spoken, the moment captured within us forever. We both lay naked
together in front of the fire, not afraid of who we are or what
we look like. All our little insecurities and the scars no longer
exist as we hold each other in a trusting and comforting embrace.
I push my nakedness closer into yours, feeling our two hearts
pounding against each other’s bodies.
‘I remember, the moon resting on
the brim of the earth, as his soul drifted into the angels arms
that came to collect him. His spirit rose and met the heavenly
father who took his hand within his own and guided him through
the stars and into the gentle heavens. I stood waist high in the
cold freezing water of the ocean near our summerhouse, and
farewell my dearest beloved, my tears had stopped, but my agony
still showed. How was I to go on without him showing me how? How
was I to get up in the morning and live my life without him being
there to help guide me through it? I made prays in God’s
church and he did not answer them, and everything I was, simply
crumbled and painfully broke. My husband died, and I had wanted
so desperately to stop living, but I went on. I got up, and I
pass through the day, and I lay awake during the night, just
waiting. Waiting to see him again, and be with him. And it would
come, the time when two souls destined only for each other would
be reunited, and I lay in my bed, this night, and know deep in my
heart of all hearts, I would see the only man I’d ever
loved, my husband, before the dawning broke.
Jude Kovac’s last journal had not yet
been filled with words, and moments, and memories. Only twenty
pages in, they lay blank. She had died in her sleep, the night of
her last entry. Cause of death, her time had simply come. One
year after her dear husband, who already took his peaceful
journey into the kingdom of grace? Left behind now was a legacy
and a line of kindred who embraced the same morals and beliefs
set down in them by their beloved. A family of siblings and
relatives who were the more blessed and graceful having known
them, children who would follow them in some of the foot steps
they had laid down behind them, and in the ones they had laid out
ahead.’
For a little time longer, we kiss,
touch, and tease. Your tongue answering mine. Your heart and soul
taking in everything I give to you. We whisper to each other, our
feelings, and our thoughts touch. Promises are made, secrets are
told, questions asked and answered. Requests made and obliged. We
aim only to please each other and have ourselves pleased by one
another.
Tonight, we
lay in each other’s arms, lost in each other’s hopes
and dreams, fantasies and pleasures. The music playing, the
candles and the fire burning, tasting each other, enjoying each
other, pleasuring and pleasing, begging and wanting, I want to
taste you, I kiss you hard on the mouth, exploring with my
tongue, I can still taste the wine on you lips. Our kisses so
deep and passionate, promising everything, we lay wrapped in a
lovers cocoon, for the longest time, touching, holding, kissing,
and savoring.
Juices being
tasted, and being devoured, I lay back my eyes closed, wishing of
all the things I want to feel you do to me, waiting, you kiss
each of my closed eyes one at a time, giving and sharing
yourself, pleasing me. My heart is pounding, my muscles tense
with pure delight. My hips rising to meet yours, I want to feel
you inside me.
‘If you woke
too late, you missed it. If you were silent, you could almost
hear it. The dawn rising to meet a new day. Jude and Luka could
do neither; they were too enslaved in one another to know
anything but how much they loved each other, and all who existed
within their lives. They were too busy to remember and reminisce
the times that took them into sweet peaceful sleep. They were too
taken away by the moment to take within their grasps, the tokens
of the love and spirits, which aided them in their days without
each other. They forgot when their hearts lay heavy with
disappointment and solace. They forgot when their loving spirits
were crushed with decisions that were not their own. They were
too taken with each other’s gentle being to remember
anything or anyone but themselves in this moment in time.’
You gently
take my face into your hands, kissing me all over, you inhale my
perfume, and I do not fight or contest to you lips. We are
instantly joined heart to heart, husband to wife. Emotional love
surrounds us; spiritual love took us to ecstasy. Life began all
over again. Willingly and unselfishly, we give each other
everything of ourselves, and are instantly impaled into what can
only be described as pure and true grace. The spiritual energy I
knew so deeply we had, which allowed us to completely give
ourselves to one another, flowed through both of us, as we gave
and received the earnest of our entire self’s.
Softly with my fingers, I brushed over
your cheek whilst you slept and dreamt away the night wrapped in
my arms. My sweet husband, you sleep the morning away not knowing
of the moments taking place in your life, but you wake to
discover them. The note on the pillow next to you is not even
close to being what is left of the night we spent together. I
would be coming back. I would always come back. You knew this
now, after almost ten years of marriage, and two babies. You
would always know it. In our journey’s together that made
our lives complete, we found the truth of what each of us was,
not only to ourselves but also to each other. With guiding hands
and loving hearts, we openly and voluntarily took one another to
a place where harm would come to us sometimes. Where heartbreak
would destroy us, but as one, we challenged what was not good and
accepted wholeheartedly the things we changed together and defied
against, that allowed us to live in the peace and serenity we had
long known since we met.
Our hearts chained to what each other
was and had been. Our souls to be weaved together for eternity.
Our spirits encased by a multitude of love and devotion. I
leave you with this, a token of my feelings for you, of my life
with you, of everything I am and will be for you and to you, my
love. My note simply read:
Dearest
Luka, my husband, my love
Always,
my heart.
Love
Jude, your wife, your love’
‘Luka Kovac
stood at the window, watching his wife leave, not knowing what
tomorrow would bring for him or his family. A new day, obviously.
A new child, perhaps. A son, maybe. Nathaniel Weaver Kovac.’
Therefore, this
was it. A very significant part of my grandparent’s life
that I had never known. I heard tales of times and of things that
had happened. I had seen and experienced feelings from all sides,
and now know how things truly existed between them. How fire and
passion burn within the lives of two souls whom I share a
bloodline with. They were no longer two people who were just my
grandparents, but two kin that found each other, bound as one
within what life was to them, and who embraced love and family
into their large welcoming embraces, to get all us through it.
Here it was, this morning where the dawning was awakened, staring
me in the face, words written down of a night and a moment where
a legacy was set forth.
Foretold from
this moment on I, Lucia Ann Kovac will always be thankful for a
moment, my grandparents had together. If not for that night, I
would not have been conceived. For that night, my father was
created, by two loving souls, who through life and I feel now
even into death will love each other always and beyond, in
whatever existed in the realm of God and the existence he
circumference.