Apolonia Karwowska.

After 65 years of marriage to her beloved Stanislaw, Apolonia has been a widow for just over one hundred days living alone in the house she birthed four children in, next to an overgrown German cemetery, in the Polish countryside where she just realized that she was actually quite lonely.

Her personal history of loneliness stems back to the seventies when her eldest daughter, Janka, was the first to immigrate to the United States in 1976.  Her second born, a son named Leszek, never left home and died on October 10th of 2007.  Her second daughter, my mother named Grazyna, followed Janka to the United States with my family in 1982.  Her baby, my aunt Hania, joined her two sisters in the United States in 1987.

For the last couple of years I have watched my mother cry memories and travel across high seas to be with Apolonia every time she has called for help.  We have traveled to be with her too.  To the only place she's familiar with.  The only place she knows.  Her home, Poland.

Look!  Apolonia is classy in pearls!  Don't mind the screaming baby.

It was on our travels that I learned my daughters had a lot in common with Apolonia¹. 

My mother received a disturbing phone call on Christmas Eve this year from a relative in Poland that demanded someone from America fly to countryside of Poland because Apolonia suffered a stroke.

"How do you know?  She suffered a stroke?" My mothered breathed into the telephone.  Worried.

"Her speech.  It's sloppy."

"Is her mouth droopy to one side?"

"Apolonia!  Come here.  Let me watch you speak!  Speak to me Apolonia."

"Is her mouth droopy?"

"No.  Her mouth is not droopy."

Insert Apolonia's wheels turning, as she eavesdropped in on the trans-Atlantic phone call, realizing that her cries for help weren't being acknowledged.  She suddenly dropped her lip to one side and spoke over the phone, "I.  Don't.  Know.  What is wrong with me.  I am old.  So old.  So so so old."

"Ah ha! She is droopy to one side.  Just right now I noticed it.  She has suffered a massive stroke."

My mother flew to Poland on New Years Eve not because she was worried that her mother Apolonia had suffered a stroke alone in her own home but because she had an instinct that her mother was lonely.  And dramatic. And was desperately crying out for help.  Tonight my father, in Chicago, purchased a round trip ticket for Apolonia to come on a "vacation" to her three daughters, all of whom are in Chicago.  Apolonia will have her own bedroom with a TV live streaming all of her favorite Polish soap operas in Chicago.

"I will be such a burden."

"Than don't be."

"But.  I will.  It's all I know."

"Than you will live with Janka."

"And.  I will become a burden to Janka."

"Than we will send you to Hania's."

"I will be a burden on her too."

"Than you will die with three daughters and seven grandchildren and three great-grandchildren by your side."

"Yes.  I'm ready to go to the America."

We've waited years for Apolonia to speak those words.  In ten days I will have a grandmother I hardly know living six hours away from me.  I can not wait to stubbornly request that she paints a picture of living in Poland during the war while raising four extraordinary children whom I look up to in awe daily.  There is no way she will be lonely anymore.

1.   How I wish I had the balls to name one of my children Apolonia.  That name, the patron saint of teeth, just freaking rocks and it is why I nicknamed my daughter online as Lola because she reminds me of my grandmother.  Apolonia.  Lola.  Awesome!  I had no idea that Apolonia's mother was named the same as Fifi (name IRL) until my mother vistited her grave last year.  SO awesome that I got something right, by mistake.