Mrs. Syminec

Mrs. Syminec

Philadelphia, PA

1962- 1995

The Syminec family lived down the street from us. And like so many families in our neighborhood, they had lots of kids, 13 to be exact. When my family moved to Overbrook, in 1962, Rosie, the youngest child, had recently been killed. She was hit by car right in front of the house. She was 4 at the time, playing in the front yard with several of her siblings. They have been left in charge of her but they weren’t paying enough attention to her.  Rosie slipped away from them and ran into the street, in between cars. The driver never saw her. When he hit her and killed her, he got out of the car, sat on the sidewalk and wept.

Mrs. Syminec came charging out of the house, filled with grief, disbelief, and bewilderment. As the ambulance took her daughter’s dead body away, Mrs. Syminec went over to the man crying on the sidewalk and consoled him. She forgave him. And she moved on to care for her 12 remaining children.

Four years later, Andy, her eighth-grade son, was out with friends at dusk, on a rainy Friday evening. They were on Route #1, a busy street and they were playing chicken-in-the-road. Andy slipped and the driver didn’t see him. Andy was killed instantly. And again, the entire community mourned with Mrs. Syminec. We felt guilty for having a tinge of anger towards Andy for being so foolish and putting his mother through yet another unbearable heartbreak.

I never saw much of Mrs. Syminec after this time. But she grabbed everybody’s attention yet again in 1995, when John, one of her younger children, now in adult, was in a car accident and died instantly. This was now the third child this woman buried due to car accidents.

I wonder how all this heart ache affected her. I wonder how she talked herself into getting up each day and moving on from so much sorrow. I wonder if she was filled with an abundance of “what-ifs”. I wonder if she ever met anybody who had more sorrow than she had. I can’t imagine having that much sorrow and whenever I think of Mrs. Samonek I am filled with sorrow.