Education of an Angel

By Walter Jaskiewicz, Miller Place, New York

As appeared in

I stepped off the bus with a heavy heart.

Usually this was one of the most exciting parts of my week, going to my college biology class.

That class was the start of a whole new life for me. I’d been ill during high school and only earned my diploma later in night school. Finally I’d enrolled at Medgar Evers College, a brand-new school opened by New York’s City University system. The college was so new it didn’t have a campus. My biology class took place at a church in Brooklyn, a 45-minute bus ride from my parents’ house in Bay Ridge. I loved that class.

Except today I was coming to drop out for a while. The day before, my father had died. He’d been a janitor at a big building in midtown Manhattan. He’d fallen from a ledge at work and broken his leg. Three weeks later he’d suffered a fatal embolism. My mom wasn’t doing well either. She was struggling to recover from an operation. I’d already missed yesterday’s class and I was coming to tell the professor I wasn’t sure when I’d return.

I approached the church, a beautiful Gothic sanctuary more than 100 years old with a soaring bell tower, Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian. A warm September sun shone down.