True Story: Adele Essentially Wrote My Great-Grandfather's Biography In Song Without Knowing So

In the Willi Gittens cover of the Adele song “Easy On Me”, I can hear the lyrics much more clearly than I heard in the original version and other covers. As far as I can tell, even though Adele obviously never knew my paternal grandfather or his parents, this could have been essentially my great-grandfather’s final days summed up. Legally, I cannot re-publish the lyrics here, although I did quote them when I am referred to them in my blog entry.

To sum up (or again sum up) his life story, I can tell you the following:

Great-Granddad (ע״ה) treated Great-Grandma (ז״ל) in a hurt-people-hurt-people way. He endured a lot of trauma just from living as a pogrom survivor and Crypto Jew whom, with his rape-survivor mother, had to flee what is now Poland as quickly as he could. He, I now think, had a rape-conceived sibling whom was left behind in Poland and not, as I previously thought, born in the United States. He became a paternal orphan when he was 17 going on 18, and he would experience a lot of other loss by the time that he himself died. As I write this, for example, his brother Bernie’s 61st secular-calendar yahrzeit came and went nine days ago—and Bernie (ז״ל), being the youngest brother at just over 15 years younger, ideally should have outlived him. So should have my first granduncle Tony—his firstborn son (ז״ל.).

After essentially losing his childhood and losing (among over 10 others in a total of just under 60.17 years ) at least two siblings in his first 20 years (including his left-behind sibling in 1907-1908), both parents by the time that he was 31 (with neither of his parents reaching even 60 years—let alone 70 years—of age), and a younger brother and a younger cousin (Lillie Czarnecki Trudnak, ז״ל) in the same year (1963/5723), he endured the final straw. With the coal mines closed down in Sugar Notch and his right leg lost (specifically, his three middle toes and his lower leg severed) in a lawnmowing accident, he lost hope of any employment and of staving off PTSD and Depression flareups.

He would have been familiar with tashlich and netilat yadayim as well as mikvot. He would have also heard of baptism by immersion (for at least the mere reason that Northeastern Pennsylvania actually contained a WASP community even during its Non-WASP demographic shifts), and he perhaps would have explained to Great-Grandma and my younger granduncle Tony (ז״ל) what drove him to a suicide attempt had he survived it.

The lyrics alone would capture that, along with the facts that he did change his mind about suicide and that he did leave a suicide note in the car. I don’t know if Granduncle Tony or Great-Grandma ever read or even saw the suicide note that was found at the scene. What I do know is that Granduncle Tony was an 18-year-old paternal orphan whom was still living with a hurt-people-hurt-people father and a now-widowed mother. What I also know is that Great-Grandma was a conflicted 51-year-old widow whom had endured an abusive 30-plus-years marriage.

Since I cannot legally republish the lyrics here, then, perhaps the following passage that I have written elsewhere will put in other words (and with a true-life generational prequel) exactly why “Easy On Me” is Great-Granddad’s unintentional biography in musical form:

“From what I hear of my great-granddad, on the other hand and as my granduncle Tony shockingly told me when I said something about my dad and granddad, "Like father, like son." I will never forget that Granduncle Tony wrote that, meanwhile, especially since he normally didn't cross Jack Czarnecki openly (and if you knew my grandfather. you might've been tempted to not stand up to him). Other people talked about how awful Great-Granddad was as well; and I've seen pictures of my dad when he was younger and around Great-Granddad, and you could tell that he did not like him if you'd seen the pictures.

”One even had the caption "Doesn't seem to upset at his Grandfather Czarnecki". Dad covered up that part of the caption when he scanned it in and sent it to me.”

I’ve actually included a colorized version of that one photo with this Vella submission, and I’m guessing that, that picture demonstrates that Great-Granddad did expect even Dad to take it easy on him when Dad was at such a young age.