He was only sixteen when, as the eldest of four kids, he joined his father in the USA to fend for himself and to send something to his siblings and mother back home in Poland. Just one look at Andres and you could tell that he had been a responsible youngster all his life. Everything about him seemed to suggest that he had been there, done that: his hands, build, mannerisms, the look in his eyes, everything. He knew a little English that he learned in his homeland, as part of a new wave of his generation in which the education system in his country had been investing via globalization. But now he had to stand in for Darius, his dad, who had experienced a different climate of socialization in his time, and therefore couldn’t survive without a son being a father to his own dad in matters of English.

Construction might not have been Darius’ forte in his hometown, but in the USA, he must make good of a bad situation where he was an undocumented worker, his English nonexistent and with a teenage son as his responsibility. Plus, his commitment towards his family and parents didn’t cease the minute he left his landlocked country. Darius made sure to minimize his misdemeanor by encouraging Andres to register as an English student, that much his hands were untied to do, to fulfill his legal duties as a parent residing illegally in the USA. However, Andres’ sole purpose was to make money like all the other Poles who immigrated, and so he joined Darius on construction worksites by day and attended an ESL (English as a Second Language) school by night. He was making good bucks, and you could see that it was making him happy to know that he was doing well for himself and his immediate family, such an obedient guy, Andres. He often spoke about cooking meals for Darius.

“What are you doing now?” I asked him one night after he called me on the telephone.

“Cooking for me and Dad,” replied Andres.

“What can you cook?” I chuckled.

“Many things,” he said, not bothering to mention any Polish menu, knowing that I wouldn’t have had a clue what they were.

“You mean Pierogi?” I jeered, since that must have been one of the few Polish dishes that served my memory correctly.

Andres laughed in acquiescence. But that laughter soon turned to sorrow. As they were about to leave for work the next morning, Darius announced that he wasn’t feeling well. The father’s stomach felt somewhat unusual, and at first the mature man thought he needed assistance. Andres made him a cup of tea, thinking that at age forty-eight, Dad must have been coming down with the normal ailments, like indigestion, that duly affect American people. However, when Darius sat around the kitchen table with his head buried in his palms, Andres called the ambulance. The emergency team was well on its way, when Darius must have thought about his status in the US and suddenly had a change of heart.

“Tell the ambulance not to worry,” he said in Polish language.

“Why? Are you feeling better?” inquired Andres.

“Yes, much better,” the elder replied.

Andres did as he was told. Hence, the ambulatory transfer was never put into effect. He thought he would stay home that day to assist Darius in a case of emergency, but Darius objected.

“You can go to work,” he said. “I’ll be fine taking the day off.” Darius sat in the living-room sofa where Andres had guided his steps for him to take a breather.

“Are you sure?” asked Andres, who wouldn’t have known at his age that a sick person was not the best to make certain health-risking decisions.

“I told you. Don’t worry.”

And from that last confirmatory response, Andres left the house, after shaking his dad’s hand. At work, he put in the hours as usual, sometimes even forgetting how the day had started for the two. He didn’t even bother to call home to find out if Darius was feeling any way worse. That evening he retraced his steps, opened the door of the two-bedroom apartment in Wallington, and found his place of abode in silence.

“Dad,” Andres shouted with his Polish accent.

No answer. Andres’ first intuition didn’t tell him to go to the living-room where he had left Darius, but to rush to his father’s bedroom to see if he was sleeping. When that effort failed to yield any result, the young lad rushed to where he had left his father in a relaxed position. There he made the gruesome discovery. Darius was still sitting at the exact spot with his eyes closed and not a stick of breath. Naturally, he ran towards his father and shook him, but alas, Darius’ body felt as stiff as a rock. Andres knew that he needed the ambulance team now, not to transport his dad’s body to the hospital, but to the most convenient morgue.

Andres came to school crying, incurring the sympathy of the entire Polish population in Garfield. He was now in a world by himself and at such a tender age, any help was more than welcome. When the news awakened the school community, nobody was in any mood to learn English that night, as preparation got underway to see how Darius’ body could be shipped to his native Poland. That cost anywhere to the tune of fifty thousand American dollars, and for a young teen to find that kind of money, it was like seeking to squeeze blood out of stone. Fortunately, the Polish descendants were very caring people and wouldn’t let their own fall by the wayside. The insipid complication for the youth was that as an F1 student, he wasn’t allowed to travel until his status changed after the duration of his English course, according to immigration laws and the circumstances under which he registered as a scholar. Now he was faced with the choice of either accompanying his dead dad back to their homeland to show his last respect at the funeral. Or, send along the corpse while remaining in the USA to stick out his studentship obligations, in a bid to carve out his future. The latter consideration sounded like the better of the two options, and friends and well-wishers wanted him to yield to such sounder judgment. However, Mom in Poland requested that he got out of the bedeviled situation, and therefore she prompted him to get on the plane. After the funeral, Andres tried to get the US immigration officials to understand his plight, but his pleas fell on deaf ears. Whatever came his way, what a guy!

This true story reminded me of another veritable adventure of another teen in the 1970’s in Jamaica. He went to sea with his father on a fishing expedition and the boat lost its engine, drifting off in the Caribbean waters. The father fell sick and died, leaving fourteen-year-old Jason alone to fend off sharks and other sea creatures from capsizing the boat. The boy kept his father’s body, hoping that somebody would come to his rescue, so that his father would probably get a proper funeral. However, with each passing day, hope faded fast as the boat went wherever the tides dictated its path. Jason took off his shirt and waved at airplanes and passing ships, but nobody seemed to care. He ran out of food and started to feed on raw fish to survive. Meanwhile, his father’s body started to decompose, and he was forced to feed it to sharks that sought relentlessly to overturn the bouncing boat. Fourteen days later, just when the youth was at his tether’s end, an aircraft spotted the vessel and rescued a limp and voiceless boy, who told his story to The Daily Gleaner to make national headlines in 1974. These teens must have been specially built to last in their class.