Vivian Dolores (Joseph) Simon
VIVIAN DOLORES (JOSEPH) SIMON
October 25, 1931 - July 3, 2021
Detroit, MI - Stockton, CA
NICHOLAS WADE SIMON
December 28, 1928 - December 5, 1977
Steubenville, OH - Stockton, CA
The Best For Last
for Vivian Joseph Simon
The dice have no memory. Or so they say.
Eight straight rolls. Eight straight boys, brothers, sons, fathers.
The gene pool was deep on that end.
1912 - a boy, 1914 - another, 1917 - yet another, 1918 - lost to pneumonia,
1920, ’24, ’26 ’28.
With each roll the dice came up male - home delivered.
The only women in the impoverished labor room (read kitchen table)
were the exhausted, unmedicated mother and the midwife.
You save the best for last. Or so they say.
She was the absolute child – the last and the first.
Concluding daughter – conclusion of sons.
1931, the first to be born in a hospital.
In childhood, the last to be disciplined.
The last to leave home – the first to leave hometown.
You can debate the mercy now that she’s the last one standing.
Of the sixteen, she was the first to lose a spouse.
Her fourteen other peers would follow.
Her husband the first, and her, the last act.
She is the overture and the finale.
Alpha and omega bookends.
and the book ends with her.
The moral of her story.
The best lasts.
Vivian Dolores (Joseph) Simon
I was asked to write a poem for my beloved Aunt and Godmother's grandchild that was being married. Warned to never write for the occasion, I felt most comfortable comparing a wedding of today to my imaginings of my paternal grandparents wedding. This poem entitled AN ENDLESS EMBLEM is the result.
AN ENDLESS EMBLEM
(for Nick and Brandy)
The tradition carried on
before a modest crowd gathered in an ancient town.
The church aisles were not strewn in rose petals-
No entourage of tuxedoed men
nor parade of taffeta’d attendants…
just an arranged couple adorned
in a simple wreath of cedar and morning blossoms
- eternity signified -
- an endless emblem –
More than a century ago -
a youthful laborer
repeating words he could not read
rested an artless ring
on the hand of an adolescent olive-picker…
She made promises and prayers in their native tongue
and to each
they expressed an innate vow to survive…
humble souls accepting a fate
We are not to compare our lives to theirs
the unforgiving poverty cloaked their future.
Instead, we are to fill the ancestral spaces that distance us
with ceremony and celebration
that each generation may embrace.
So on this day
as you set foot on lineage’s path
each stride reminisces
of that 1911 September morning
in a mountain village
and your peasant ancestors
whose unspoken dreams you fulfill -
step by inherited step…
Nicholas Wade Simon - Burial Site
San Joaquin Catholic Cemetery
719 E. Harding Way
Stockton, CA 95201
