Response from Seibold Construction Inc. // Leak Master
When sitting down with a potential customer and reviewing the work to be estimated, I sometimes share with them that one of my customers liked her completed siding job so much that she married me. I’ll normally hear a few chuckles. As Paul Harvey said, “and then there’s the rest of the story.” It was at the end of March 1990 I was given a lead from a teller at my local bank. It wasn’t until Mid November of the same year that I came across it after cleaning out my wallet. Scrawled in a faint pencil scratch, barely able to make out the numbers, “was that a 3 or an 8,” I made the call. At the other end was a rather frail voice, obviously an elderly woman, who agreed to meet the next day to discuss the project at hand. The wind was howling and the snow was blowing sideways when I pulled onto her street located on the east side of Buffalo, a rather tough neighborhood .As I approached her address ,trying to make out the numbers on the houses, I noticed a woman exiting a buick parked in front of my designated appointment. To my disbelief, she was much younger than originally thought and considerably attractive. After introducing myself she pointed out that she just wanted the front of her house sided. There was just enough money in her savings account to get it done. Over a cup of coffee in her second floor apartment, which was as neat as I’ve ever seen one, she issued the deposit. Her voice was melodic with an accent so I inquired where she was from. “Poland, I’m a long way from home,” and she began to sob. Over the course of an hour or so I discovered that she just recently had a complete gastrectomy, {removal of the stomach”}, due to cancer. She began to tell me her story at my insistence. Escaping from Communist Poland in 1982, she spent 1 year in an Austrian interment camp before being sponsored by Catholic Charities with a host family in Hamburg New York. She took a cleaning position despite her degree in economics because of the language barrier. At the age of 12, she had witnessed her Mother’s horrific murder. Her 4 brothers and sisters at that time {she being the oldest}, were split up into different orphanages. Her teenage years read like a prisoner of war from WW11, the abuse she endured was dreadful. Unable to work and collect disability because she didn’t know that she had to sign the proper forms state side, I began to take care of her. After several treatments with a very strong batch of German chemotherapy, losing her hair twice and about 40 lbs, the cancer came back with a vengeance, riddling her body with tumors from top to bottom. She was given 6 weeks to live but the doctors would try surgery in a month to remove most of them, her heart was just to weak to perform it now. It was then that I decided to borrow some money and fly to Poland with Elizabeth to help locate her brothers and sisters that she hadn’t seen in 24 years.{at that time, they were 10, 7, 5, and 6 months} On the way to the airport we decided to take a pit stop at city hall to get married, she didn’t want to die alone. Over the next 10 days, we crissed crossed the country by train from Krakow to Bialystok, it was mid Febuary 1991. Having to carry her much of the time because she had lost so much weight, from 130lbs to about 98, we visited orphanages and police stations at the site where she last remembered seeing them. Of course all the street names had been changed thru the political changeover but there was quite a determination that went beyond words. One by one , a door was opened up that led us right where we needed to be. In 10 days we had located everyone, now full grown with families of their own. After tons of hugs and kisses, laughter and joy we all made the trip to Bialystok, near the Belarussian border to locate their Mother’s marker. Pawing through 3 feet of snow for most of the morning we finally found the grave marker. We formed a large circle around the mound as prayers were offered up in a language unbeknownst to me, but it really didn’t matter, I was so choked up I couldn’t speak anyways. The next day we flew back home brimming with gratefulness at having made the connections and yet apprehensive at the surgery to come. Dr. Robert Milch was her surgeon, who by the way just retired as executive director of hospice. The morning after we arrived in the US we drove right to the hospital for pre-op tests. Waiting patiently for the ultra sound and catscan results ,after about 45 minutes we heard the hurried shuffle of the 5 doctors who were to perform the surgery in shifts, approach our bench. Anxiously Elizabeth asked “is there anything wrong?” The lead doctor’s response which I will never forget, scratching his head and saying, “that’s just the point there’s nothing wrong, the surgery is cancelled, we don’t know what to make of this one, there’s nothing there, I mean{ as he fumbled for words}, all the bloody tumors are gone!” We’ve been happily married now for almost 20 years. Elizabeth received the counseling she so desperately needed to sort things out from a turbulent life. A wise person once said that either nothing is a miracle or everything is a miracle.. I have come to the conclusion that regardless of our occupation, race or cultural background, whether young or old or somewhere in-between, we can be angels for each other. She certainly has been my angel. -Micheal Seibold