“Eighty five is old.” is all my boyfriend and his mother could muster up.

But it isn’t old when you are supposed to be as eternal as Jerusalem, St. Michael the Archangel, or the Bible itself. All of the women in my family loved him, and hung his picture on their night tables and dresser mirrors like a Teen Beat magazine pin-up. His face was good luck, his cross-like motioning made everything you carried instant relics. He could speak as many languages as God, and he was so cute and little that you could wrap him up in a dusty tissue and take him with you where ever you went. As a teenager, I’d even heard a rumor once that he wore White Doc Martins commissioned by the Swiss Guard and was actually very cool in real life. When asked ‘What is your favorite food?’, the Pope’s response was ‘Whatever I am eating at the time.’ How cool is that? All of this, from a Polock born with a girl’s name.