A death in the family
Jordan, Patrick
Patrick Jordan A DEATH IN THE FAMILY Ivan F. Alava, R.I.P. armen Alava is Commonweal's first person of welC come, a presence willing and helpful--on the phone, to each one who crosses our...
...It is the sort of card one sees hanging from the rearview mirrors in some Gypsy cabs: a prayer in plastic, made to endure and to shield from tears...
...She begged him to slow down...
...They would work hard and eventually spend blood to prove again that opportunity has its rewards...
...The rest was work, work, driving work, from 6 in the morning until 2 or 3 the following day...
...Then a young evangelical preacher arrived...
...Western Wind" shows us a specific, erotic yearning...
...Love doesn't exist "in general...
...This was written by the always prolific Anonymous, probably during the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century...
...Even without the benefit of priestly office, he manifested a gentle authority...
...Two years ago he and his wife Socorro had begun to buy a house in Bloomfield, near Newark...
...Carmen doesn't recall how the two of them made their way to the hospital...
...Although love in practice can be the most complicated thing in the world, it is not hard for us to understand at one level...
...Infatuation, often the beginning of erotic love, can be overwhelming and distressing, inconvenient...
...The importance of these poems for me is not only literary, but has to do with how we think of love--the particular love we have for the one we want to take into our arms, which has to do with larger loves...
...Life continues...
...A number of churches had sent their representatives to bring solace, spiritual and material...
...For the rest of us--who never rode with Ivan--there is a yearning for the young preacher's assurance: for an understanding of forgiveness, and some release from outrage...
...Six years earlier, Ivan and Socorro had made the long journey to el norte from their native Ecuador, to recreate the American Dream...
...That love need not be erotic, but it has to be for a particular person...
...Why had he even resigned, she wondered...
...All stood in the moldering hall as he read from the Gospel of John, and then sat respectfully as he declaimed on the remarkable impact of Christ's saving act...
...This was written by the American poet Kenneth Patchen in 1957...
...Never one to be intimidated, Ivan often appeared at Newark's City Hall, speaking before the taxi commission or defending some fellow immigrant's rights...
...The love of a parent for a child is not a choice...
...Soon it was on to Newark, and work among the strong Ecuadoran community there...
...In John's account of the Last Supper, Commonweal 8 February 13, 1998...
...Western wind, when will thou blow, The small rain down can rain...
...A person who has not loved a particular person is not capable of loving anyone, much less many people...
...One is about a specific and erotic longing, the other about something equally specific, but it moves from the specific to the abstract in a fierce and wonderful way that reminds me of Blake, as much of Patchen's work does...
...He was buried the next day from Saint Michael's Church, where there is a special shrine to her...
...But when they arrived at the emergency room, the faces of family and Ivan's fellow taxi drivers told them what they feared most: Ivan F. Alava, thirty-five and the father of four, was dead, fallecio tragicamente en la ciudad de Newark, el primero de enero, the first murder victim of 1998...
...Now the new year is very old...
...Inside, the family sat in an ashen line, bent beneath condolences and the onslaught of the local media, for whom they had become the first victim-family of the year...
...Christ, if my love were in my arms And I in my bed again...
...He gave up the presidency, but was still called at all hours for advice...
...At 3 A.M...
...I remember a lame defense of clerical celibacy that went something like this: The married man or woman loves one person, and the celibate is freed to love all persons equally.'There are good arguments for celibacy (at least for monks and nuns, if not for parish priests) but this is not one of them...
...Finally, disenchanted by the hacks for whom he drove, he led his fellow drivers in a walkout, and together they formed their own cooperative livery company: a twenty-four hour service, of which Ivan was elected the first president...
...Wide, Wide, in the Rose's Side" shows us a child, and from the child we go to all love, to anyone who loves--but it begins with one bit of flesh, bone, and beating heart...
...At one point she was forced to stand and pose for a photograph that would be flashed back to Ecuador, she holding a recent photograph of Ivan and the family...
...Whether we talk about the love of husband for wife or parent for child, there is something helpless about love, something that takes us out of ourselves whether we like it or not...
...Coming from a family of mechanics, well-versed in the resuscitation of rundown cars, Ivan found working for a taxi company a natural...
...But with the job came the harsh experience that this land of the Dream is also a place of exploitation...
...Her visage graces his laminated funeral card on one side, Ivan's serious, now eternally young face on the other...
...New Year's morning, she and her husband Freddy were awakened by an emergency call asking them to rush across the Hudson to Newark, where Freddy's brother, Ivan, had been shot while driving his cab...
...He was soon known on the streets for his winning way in retailing laminated articles, particularly watches that sport the face of a loved one beneath the hands of the timepiece...
...Would that Ivan had bad such a companion accompanying him on New Year's Eve...
...We at the office did not know Ivan...
...I don't know how consoling his message was to the family, but it moved me...
...The young man's sincerity was exercised with unassuming conviction...
...The widow has four small orphans to cherish but only her husband's ashes and broken dreams to console her...
...it is a force that impinges itself on your life...
...both are also about love (which, Yeats said, is the only thing other than death that adults can take seriously), and have an immediate power...
...It was like seeing Veronica holding up the veil...
...What fascinates me about both poems is that although they are separated by four hundred years, they are metrically similar...
...At first they lived with Carmen and her family in cramped quarters in Manhattan's Washington Heights...
...On weekends, Carmen and Freddy worked for the cooperative...
...At the wake, the grief of the widow was restrained but immeasurable and searing...
...Socorro would tell of Ivan waking the children at 3 A.M., just to see them...
...What endures is the senselessness of the murder and the longing for Ivan to rouse them all at 3 A.M...
...LOVE IS THE MEASURE . ~ From the particular to the universal ~-~" irst, two poems---one from the beginning of (more or less) modern English, the other contemporary...
...The funeral home, but a soccer punt from the taxi station Ivan had established, was overheated and packed...
...Carmen's father even took to accompanying passengers, just to make their trip more hospitable...
...Even abused children understand at some level that their parents should love them, and want to love the abusive parent...
...In Carmen's words, Ivan was the "charismatic one" of the three Alava brothers: outgoing, energetic, inventive, concerned for others...
...Small envelopes were proffered to the widow...
...Their children range in age from nine to six months...
...The bitterness that leads to further abuse, as in the case of the abused child who grows into an abusive parent, is a reaction to a profound betrayal, a betrayal of something primordial...
...But we knew other family members, and had heard of Ivan's efforts to create a life for his family...
...When it opened its doors, the mourners stretched for two blocks in the January cold...
...they drove in a daze...
...There is here something close to an absolute: The person to whom evil has been done knows that the world should not be this way, that things are meant to be different, that real love never behaves like this....Love is in this sense like gravity, and where it should be and is not there is the sense of something against the grain, something unnatural...
...In the face of violence, he said, it is the only answer...
...armen Alava is Commonweal's first person of welC come, a presence willing and helpful--on the phone, to each one who crosses our office threshold, and to those of us who work with her...
...Commonweal 7 February 13, 1998 Ivan had had a personal devotion to Nuestra Segora de El Cisne, the patroness of Loja, Ecuador...
...The next: Wide, wide, in the rose's side Sleeps a child without sin, And any man who loves in this world Stands here on guard over him...
...He asked to speak and was accorded the privilege...
...It is that sort of service, where good conversation and stories from home make for a better time...
...Two young men have been charged in the robbery-murder, one eighteen years old...
Vol. 125 • February 1998 • No. 3
