This essay was written by Regina Mondro in response to the 2025 Global Voices Essay Contest. Regina was awarded third place for this entry.
While I was processing my grief about her death, I drew her United States immigration photo in the piece I call “Anna After It All”. Despite the bright color scheme, I ended up transferring my sadness to her eyes. The original reference photo radiates strength in the face of adversity. Anna was not a stranger to hardship. In 1938, Nazis took her as a 14-year-old from Poland to Russian and Latvian work camps. After living in a refugee camp, Anna boarded the ship to America with her husband, a toddler, and a suitcase.
In the moments she wanted to share about the trauma she suffered, she would speak of the angel apparition she experienced while being forced to dig ditches. The angel gave her strength to carry on. Her persistence then meant the whole family tree was able to flourish: she raised my grandma, and my grandma raised my dad, who raised me. Anna seemed like too much of a fighter to be taken down by death, so I don't think it stopped her. I feel Anna watching over my shoulder sometimes, in a benevolent way, so I know she’s at peace.
Anna was tough as nails, which inspired me when I was going through a health crisis. I’ve learned resilience is in my blood, whether I want it to be or not. Now that I’m doing better, I like to think she is proud of being an inspiration to my art. “Anna After It All” sparked a desire in me to incorporate heritage into my body of work. As a practicing artist, I explore facets of fragility and resilience through the origami crane motif. In my pieces, I create connections between groups of birds. The situation could be going well or poorly, but the birds are in flight together. The flock is a more powerful testimony to the power of the human spirit than any bird alone. Leading the way is the matriarch, and that’s what Anna was and is to our family.
Anna would always tell my brother in her thick Polish accent, “Eat so you can be strong like bull.” Her love was best expressed in her desire to make sure we had enough to eat so we could thrive. I’ve forgotten exactly how she sounded. I try to remember it with no luck. Her voice slips away like a feather on the wind. Because of inevitable forgetting, sharing a Polish meal becomes more than eating to stay alive. It becomes a celebration and memorial of Anna’s legacy. The rest of her family tree share her stories and our own stories that we can write because of her persistence. The pierogi, kielbasa, and even my dislike of cabbage recenter me to the fact that I have community in my family and with those of Polish descent. Any heritage-rich meal puts things into perspective: as humans, we are all part of the same flock.
We still buy Polish foodstuffs at the Anna-approved Detroit grocery store for our extended-family feasts. As my grandma fries up the perogies, boils the kielbasa, and preps the Easter ham, the scents of past holidays fill the kitchen. My brothers, cousins, and I all look forward to the sense of familiarity it brings. So maybe we eat the kielbasa with ketchup instead of the traditional horseradish. The things that give it meaning, the memories, are the same, and Anna lives on.