Happy Father's Day!

  Johann Jacob Janzen                        Sunday, June 16, 2013

“Oh my Papa” is a song I learned in German as a child in Argentina. I will leave you with one German and two English versions:

•LILLI PALMER - OH MEIN PAPA 1954 - YouTube
•Eddie Fisher - Oh My Papa [1954] - YouTube 

•Lena Zavaroni Singing Oh My Papa 1975 - YouTube 

I don’t remember much about my Papa, since I was only five at the time of his untimely death. But, what I do remember is his love and kindness toward me.

He left behind--in me--the love for people, music, art, writing, and...Oh, yes, I must not forget cycling and traveling. 

The other thing that he left for me and have appreciated--more so, in the last few years--was the German journal he wrote about a year before his death. What a gift to leave behind for your children!

A couple of years ago I translated his journal into English. And once that was done, I got involved in genealogy (thanks, Tim Janzen), and then came my own “health issue,” and then, and then...

I have procrastinated long enough, and now that I understand how to lock in place on my computer (thanks Louise Bergen Price for the hint) photographs from a large maroon rectangular family photo album, I am moving forward again. 

But, perhaps, deep inside, there is that fear that once I am done with the journal, so will the relationship that I had with him and his friends. It’s as if they came to life. 

My next step is to find a map of the world and trace on it his escape from Russia into China and his move from Paraguay to Argentina.

My father acquired his accounting diploma in Russia, but most of his life he was a roof builder. Our next door neighbour, Hans Kaethler, was his business partner. For my friends in Altona, this was Maryanne Kaethler Brown’s uncle. There must have been a Maryanne in the family because Hans Kaethler named his oldest daughter Maryanne as well.

• My father, Johann Jacob Janzen.

• Family photo album. I am so thankful that he took the time to label most of the photographs. 

• The little red book is sitting at home in a bookshelf. It is an English/German dictionary that I have treasured all my life because I remember my father sitting at the dining-room table learning English words and teaching me 1-10 in English. 

• The letter was the last one he wrote to his brother Cornelius, who six years after my father’s death, became my step-father. 

I must say, my father had incredibly nice penmanship--lots of flair. 

By now you probably want to know what went wrong. Life should not end at  44. 

It happened on a Sunday. My father decided it was time to visit friends--he was a “social butterfly.” He loved people, parties and joking around. Had he not been feeling well...? Did he have a premonition? Or, was it because a few weeks before this day, gypsies, with wavy long black hair and flowing colourful long skirts, had come around. And having taken his hand, had predicted that he was going on a very long journey...Which was all true. We were getting ready to move to Canada. Or, perhaps it was the owl perched on the roof of our house that kept hooting night after night “calling his name.” He had said, “I need to get rid of that owl!”

And so it was that the four of us--my parents, Erica and I--got into our gray VW bug, and headed out to the country-side.  

After a long day and a number of hellos and goodbyes, hugs and kisses, and who know how many yerba mate rounds, we headed back home. 

I remember standing behind him on the back seat of the car. He reached back, pulled me forward, and gave me a kiss on the cheek. 

Isn’t it wonderful that some things are engraved in our memory?

“The good ones we want to keep and the bad ones we want to have learned from.”

But that evening, something went terribly wrong. Juan, Erica, and I were told to stay in the kitchen, but curiosity got the best of me and as I stood in the darkened hallway, and with my parents door not quite closed, I heard my father’s painful last word: “Katja.” 

There must have been other words, but “Katja,” my mother’s name, is all I remember.  A blood clot from his leg had lodged itself in his lung (Pulmonary Embolism), and he was gone.

What comes to mind today is:

“He didn’t live a long life, but he lived it to the full.” 

May this day be a  Happy Father’s Day celebration for you as you focus on the good memories.

Hilda