How Personal It Is

He spoke with the subdued
passion of loss, this genial man
whose former robust presence
had been as a formidably friendly
hovering presence, those rare
occasions when mutual interests
intersected between a German and
a Jew. Now, he looks spectral,
inverted within himself, his smile
wan as he recounted his
92-year-old mother's death vigil.
Expected, he sighs, and so glad
he is now that he took both his
now-departed parents to visit
places, while he could, they would
otherwise never see, from nearby
Austria to far-off Canada. A good 
and loving son, and the listener's 
heart could not but heave for him. 
He spoke wryly of his mother's 
feeble but still commanding 
manipulations compelling him to 
do what he would prefer not. 
Not a dozen years younger than 
his mother, I wonder idly her
role during her generation's 
best-forgotten Holocaust years.