The Last of the First

Though I am putting so much into a space barely large enough for a full-grown man to fit inside of, which gives me the shudders to think about, one must remember that all of this isn't for me, it's for my great-grandkids. Yes, I'm old. You ask, "How old are you?" Let me tell you; I'm old enough to have seen the last of the nineteenth century with innocent eyes, old enough to have remembered the twentieth century through blood and tears, and to see how the twenty-first century shaped up from both. I was alive when empires fell and dystopias arose in their place, when science bounced from escalating war to treating those that were affected by such, and how humanity once literally reached for the stars.

And when I die, all that I will have aside from the memories burned into my mind will be the numbers that scar my left forearm.

The first thing I placed inside this black box-like bag on wheels (which was a ridiculous concept to me when it first came out) was a piece of chondrite from the Allegan Meteorite that landed in Michigan in 1899, now the home of my great-grandkids. Granted, I was born in the Prussian Empire (in what is now Poland), and my father was a man of science just as my grandfather was before him; unlike Grandfather who studied dead bodies, my father was more an explorer of the celestial bodies and had managed to travel over to the state and obtained a piece of the rock. A little time before that, in the same year, Grandfather was one of the men who helped discover the Bagicz Coffin containing what everyone thought was a noblewoman. He had swiped one of her bronze bracelets as a gift to Grandmother, which she gifted to me after his death.

I don't know if it was God's decision for his "grave robbing", but we all frowned upon such an act when we learned the truth (except Grandmother, who thought it was sweet that he would take such a risk).

I placed the bracelet around the meteorite piece, following up with an old wooden horse that I used to play with on my eleventh birthday. This gift was crafted by my uncle, my father's brother, as he was a toymaker and brought joy to our home town. I would always go to my personal quiet place that was a small hill with two trees that I nicknamed "V-town". There, I would have my wooden horse gallop around on an adventure amongst the creepy crawlers that resided there. I was young and foolish, believing that V-Town would last forever.

The next thing I placed inside was my military uniform.

Prussia called for the abled-bodied, even those seventeen years of age. I thought I would be fortunately placed into the Landwehr, but that luck changed when the fighting came for our home. I ended up facing the dreaded No Man's Land, seeing nothing but death on the ground and in the air. Silence killed far more than just lives; men went mad and even charged head-long into that horrid place. The most fearful thing about No Man's Land was that it spread like a plague, and the symptoms lasted even when the war was finally over. I returned to a home that felt gray with misery. V-Town was gone, little more than rubble barely held above cracks.

Again, I was young and foolish, believing that things would get better in time.

Into the suitcase went a few pictures with frames that were the last things my uncle carved with a heart that stopped when it was broken. Such surrounded my happiest moment with a woman once known as Lena, tall and blonde with a beauty of summer, and she would be later known as my wife. Despite the good times that would come for nearly ten years followed by the Depression that hit us hard, we stuck together with three wonderful children named Antoni, Piotr, and Hanna. We had hoped that the Depression would end and that we could receive one more child in our lives. Instead...

I placed in a yellow star marked "Jude".

This one hit me the hardest. Granted, I wasn't the only one affected by this, but I was the only one in my family to have ever lived through the nightmare that came about under those three dreaded words: "for your safety". I voted against the government that sought to fill the shoes of the empire before it, and it still came. I voted against the disarming of the people, and I still had to hand over my weapons. I voted against the laws that would come to mark me and mine politically amongst the populace; I ended up having to send my wife and children away while I stayed behind to buy them time. When the knock came, I strode over to the door with fear, yet I pushed through it and reminded myself that I was a veteran of this country, that I had already gone through Hell. Once I opened the door, Hell reminded me that I got off easy the first time and took me for a true dance with Death. From being on the front lines to being behind barbed wires, I saw what my life had truly become; moments of peace broken by monsters that wore human faces and mocked God to mine. The only things that got me through that reign of terror was my faith, that God was watching over my wife and children.

As I wasted away and watched misery penetrate every aspect of the lives of my fellow inmates, I truly broke down from everything that I had gone through. My friends were gone! My family was probably dead! My hometown was a base for the Devil's minions! Yet, while some cursed God, I merely prayed despite the mockery from both sides. And then, one day, a new line of vehicles came not on the road, but over the hills. When such rolled over the barbs and the towers, crushing bricks and stones and metal to dust, I broke down again. These were angels that wore green and sported a banner of stars and stripes, fighting the demons that fled like cowards!

The next thing I placed inside of the suitcase was a military cap. This was from one of the Lieutenants, a man named Jacobs, who just took it off of his own head and placed it on mine, claiming that I should cover my head or I would "catch a cold". His men brought us to his camp, treating us as we were hydrated and cleaned up. When I mentioned Lena and my children, he said that he would do what he could to find them and reunite us. He kept his word, but there was a bittersweet catch; my Lena and the children were separated during the evacuation. The children were held in a home in London, but Lena had been shoved into a ship where some people had tuberculosis. She wound up in a hospital, but she held on until both I and our children could see her for one last time. A tear went into the bag, which would evaporate by the time the great-grandkids received the case, but I followed it up with both of our wedding bands, our names still engraved upon them.

I, Piotr, and Hanna would move to America, to Michigan by coincidence (Antoni, my oldest son, stayed behind to "repair Poland for future generations"). I placed a barnacle shell into the bag, having been cleaned and emptied save for its value to us on our voyage. From there, Piotr and Hanna would make lives for themselves, the former becoming both a boxer and a Marine in Vietnam, and the latter becoming a nurse before marrying and becoming a homemaker. I placed a live round from an M60 General Purpose Machine Gun into the bag, making sure that it was wrapped up in tissues, as well as my son's bayonet in its sheath (something that he had gifted me from decades ago, now it shall go to his grandkids). I also placed my daughter's stethoscope into the bag, still functional despite the years. It felt like war was something that my family couldn't escape, even if they didn't fight in it. Was all that there would be for us?

A new voyage would prove me wrong.

I had maintained my friendship with Lieutenant Jacobs, who ended up working for what would become NASA. He would wake me up on the phone one morning and told me to come to Cape Canaveral early in the morning in nineteen-sixty-seven. He told me that I would witness something truly astonishing, but he didn't tell me what it was, only that he would meet me afterwards to explain what I would see. At first, I couldn't tell what it was aside from looking like a missile, but it went farther than anything I've ever seen. There was no explosion, just a distant roar of a giant rocket breaching the sky and circling above the world. I didn't know it that morning, but America had done the seemingly impossible; they moved heaven and earth and landed a few men on the Moon with fuel, wings, and a prayer. After meeting me and telling me all of this, Jacobs handed me a piece of the rocket, having fallen off during the separation processes. That piece was also placed into the suitcase.

I then started putting in more pieces from my travels over the years; a jade dragon sculpture from China, a fan from Japan, a small umbrella from South Korea (with a note attached stating to stay away from North Korea, with my hopes that the kids won't ask why until they're older), a hunting horn from Mongolia, Matryoshka dolls from Russia, and an old English police whistle from a friend of Jacobs named Morrison, who served in the 11th Armored Division ("The Queens Mobile Liberators, good chap", he told me) and also liberated many of my people, having retired from the force and passed away over a decade ago. I then placed two folded flags within two triangular display cases marked "Jacobs" (the Star-Spangled Banner) and "Morrison" (the Union Jack) into the suitcase, both with a detailed note about taking care of them with respect and honor. For myself, I shall carry the memories of being with two great men who figuratively and literally overcame barriers.

The next pieces came from Israel.

I went there in the early nineties, before the fighting got worse. I saw a place with people of different backgrounds walking the same streets, speaking with each other in respect and interest, and religions from the Jewish backgrounds to Christians and even Muslims. I got to see Tel Aviv, a capital that rivaled even the cities of America in size and scope. I even got to meet a few familiar faces from the former Prussian Empire, easily recognizable by me despite wearing the mask of time. I placed a copy of the Torah and an Ethiopian Bible in with the items of my life, with room for a few more items.

What would a suitcase of memorabilia be without a picture book? The photos within spanned from the fifties to today, from my fun times outdoors with my children to the hospitals where I would meet my grandchildren to the homes that would house my great-grandchildren, with pictures of me and Jacobs and Morrison strewn about in random hijinks and shenanigans. I flipped through the picture book and came upon one photo that Antoni took, showing me sitting down and staring at the framed Lena staring back with such a captivating visage of innocence. In all of this joy, there was still that underlying sadness when half my heart died in a bed coughing up blood, never to see her descendants. My son told me that I would see her again; I pray that I do.

Finally, I placed in the last two items. One was my book, "A Century's Walk", which detailed my life and even got me on these things called "podcasts", where I was careful to not spoil anything while subtly promoting it. The other was the key to my house, in the hopes that my great-grandchildren would retrace the steps that I took along with the memorabilia. This current world tries to make everyone too busy and too exhausted to travel, but I was at peace. Despite my age, I still managed to move the suitcase to the cab that awaited me.

I locked the door behind me and prepared for those last few steps that I had left.