"Maybe your friends think I'm just a stranger, My face you never will see no more. But there is one promise that is given..."

"... I'll meet you on God's golden shore."
--Man of Constant Sorrow


Okay folks, here is the blog I tried to post yesterday but failed in doing so. I'm a tiny bit disappointed in how this turned out. My first bit of writing felt great, and I was very proud of what I had produced. But then I lost it. And it's very hard to try and recapture all my thoughts and the way I had expressed them. So please, keep that in mind as you read. And I apologize in advance for the length. It's not really the type of story you can shortchange.



Monday, January 31, 2005

My Mamere had surgery today. Mamere is what I call my grandmother, and since I am the first grandchild, every kid born after me has called her the same name. The story I hear is that when I was told at a very young age to say “grandma”, or some other name similar to that, the garbled words that came out of my mouth resembled something more like “Mamere”, and the name stuck.

But today she was having total shoulder replacement surgery. The “ball” part of the ball-and-socket joint is completely devoid of cartilage and must be replaced. The “socket” part suffers from the same affliction and must be replaced as well. It’s just bone rubbing against bone. Add a dangling bone spur an inch or two long to the area, and you can imagine the pain she’s in every time she moves.

I hear the surgery went fine. But thinking about my grandmother in the hospital reminded me of another time Mamere needed my help. So sit back, it’s story time. But this story isn’t funny. It deals with death. So I apologize to those of you that have a problem with that, but I felt it’s time this story was told.

It was late March, 2003. I received a phone call from Mamere and from the tone of her voice I could tell she was fighting back tears. She needed me to drive her down to Myrtle Beach in the middle of the night.

Ever since I was young, our large Italian family has always met at Myrtle Beach, SC one week in June for a large family reunion. As time has gone by, the reunions have lessened. Family members succumb to old age and death. Eventually, lots of people stopped coming down from Pennsylvania. The drive is too long and stressful. The last few years the reunion has only included my mother and brother in one condo, and my aunt, uncle, and their kids in another.

But Mamere’s uncle, my great Uncle Joe, and his wife Aunt Jean still come down every once in awhile. This week in March the two of them were there and enjoying the sun. Well one day Uncle Joe was in a pool playing ball with a little girl who was swimming there. Uncle Joe loved to swim. But something happened that day, and he collapsed in the water. He was submerged for awhile before anyone noticed.

Mamere told me Uncle Joe was on life support, and it didn’t look good, and she wanted to be there to see him. She wanted me to drive down in the middle of the night to take her there.

So I said yes. I had been reading The Return of the King for the third time during this period and would often peruse analyses of Tolkien’s world and his mythical characters in other books at bookstores or websites on the net. One character that generates much discussion is Samwise Gamgee and his status as a true hero. Sam wasn’t particularly brave (he was often terrified of the events around him) and he wasn’t well known for being a hero (like Aragorn he wasn’t). But Sam had moments of true heroism. I think Tolkien said a true hero is forged out of the events around him. A true hero makes hard decisions, sacrifices, and knows the right thing to do must be done, espite the difficulty. A hero doesn’t go out looking to save the world. A hero never wishes for the events around him to occur, but when they do, he does the right thing.

So I said yes. I want to be a good person, and like most people, I think I am. So I picked up Mamere and we drove to the beach. We got into town after midnight.

The hospital, while already being creepy during the day, was spooky at night. It’s so quiet, and empty, and that overly-sanitized smell never gets out of your nose. It’s very eerie. We went up to the critical ward and met Aunt Jean, a small, frail, elderly woman. She was so confused, so sad. When Uncle Joe passed out in the pool, she had been out on the beach, oblivious to what had gone on. She didn’t know of the accident until later when a hotel employee recognized her as Joe’s wife.

Uncle Joe was apparently in a coma and hadn’t been awake since the accident. The doctors came and took us inside his room. It was dark, I remember it being very dark. There on a bed lay Uncle Joe with all manner of cables and tubes coming out of his arms and into his mouth and into life-support machines nearby. A monitor glowed with colored lights showing heartbeats and breathing rates and other things I didn’t understand. The silence of the room was broken by the intermittent beeping from the machines. Mamere held Aunt Jean as she looked at Uncle Joe and cried. Aunt Jean tried to wake him up, but he didn’t move. That breathing accordion thing just moved up and down, over and over.

Aunt Jean touched his feet and remarked at how cold they were. I reached under his blanket and felt for his foot. Ice cold.

The doctor said they would monitor him all night and look for any changes. But if he didn’t wake by morning, taking him off of life support was something we should think about. So we went to our hotels. And we prayed.


Let me tell you a little bit about Uncle Joe. Uncle Joe is my grandmother’s uncle and the only son in an Italian family of four. His sisters include Rosalie, Mamere’s mother, who passed away long ago of Alzheimer’s, and Aunt Edith and Aunt Josephine. Aunt Edith died when I was in middle school, I think, from health problems due to smoking. Aunt Josephine died most recently of cancer I believe. Also brought about from smoking (I think. They both smoked a lot).

Uncle Joe fought in World War II. He was captured and became a Prisoner of War under Rommel, the “Desert Fox” of North Africa. He was put into a cell with other captives, and the Nazis played a strange game with them. As the story goes, they left the cell door or the door to the whole building unlocked. Well, the men began to talk of escape. But an Italian janitor who swept the floors sang a strange song as he cleaned. Uncle Joe, being the only one there who understood Italian, translated the lyrics: “Do not escape. It is a trap. They will kill you.” So he saved his mates from being killed in an attempted breakout. But then my memory gets fuzzy, and I don’t remember the rest. He escaped somehow, and I think he had to swim across a lake to freedom. Someone else knows for sure, but Uncle Joe never liked talking about it and he never did it often. He’s the only (known) relative of mine that fought in the Great War.


That night, when we returned from the hospital, I had a strange dream. I dreamt we went back to the hospital the next day to see Uncle Joe. When we got to his room, the bed was bare. The room was lit up brightly, and everything looked overexposed, and all was fuzzy and blurry in the corners of my peripheral vision. Uncle Joe was gone. Then I heard the sound of children’s laughter coming from outside. So we walked into the hallway and there, dressed in white and sitting on a bench, was Uncle Joe, smiling. He had a little boy on his lap, and standing on the bench behind him and leaning on his shoulder was a young girl. But the kids’ faces were blank, or I don’t remember who they resembled, if anyone. But they were laughing and playing with Uncle Joe, who had woken up and felt better and was in great spirits. He was healed and healthier than before the accident. Everything was better. Everything was great and everyone was happy.


And then I woke up. And things were uncertain, but I remained hopeful because of my dream. Uncle Joe’s daughter, Vicki, had flown down from Pennsylvania, and his son, Joey, and his new wife had come over from California. Together we all went back to the hospital.

Things weren’t better. Uncle Joe’s situation had not changed at all. He lay there, just as he did before, the machines breathing for him, beeping to let us know his heart was beating. Aunt Jean again noted how cold Uncle Joe’s feet were. We all gave it a feel and knew it was a bad tiding. Joey, upon looking at his father began to cry, but he tried to hold it in. We were dumbstruck. What could we do now?

The situation had come. It was time to decide whether or not to take Uncle Joe off of life support. Aunt Jean repeated over and over how Uncle Joe would never like to be laid up like this, but that did not make the decision any easier for her. But the choice was made. And at this sense of finality came an outpouring of emotion.

Joey broke down crying, burying his head in his father’s chest and crying out “Pop”. His wife, who had only met her father-in-law a few times, wept aloud as well. Vicki called out for her "Pappy". Aunt Jean desperately pleaded for Joe to wake up, please wake up. But it was no use. I felt my heart-breaking.

But I also felt outside, like a stranger. Here was Uncle Joe on his deathbed, surrounded by his closest family, and then me. His grandchildren weren’t there. His other nephews and nieces weren’t either. But I was. It was surreal

And I didn’t cry. I wanted to, and I felt like crying, but I didn’t, and I don’t quite know why. I felt like I should be the strong one. It’s hard to be around someone and know that will be your last time with them. It’s hard to stand there in a room with family members and watch them all grieve. Joey cried for his father. And I guess I felt like if he was going to let it all go, I was going to keep it all in. For him, for them, I would try not to cry and try to be strong. So I did.

The doctors came in and took us out into a small waiting room while they took Uncle Joe off life support. The waiting room was small and silent. No one really knew what to say in those moments. It seemed like a long time, but in times like those the whole concept of “time” itself goes awry. Seconds seem like eternity. An hour goes by in a minute.

Eventually the doctor or nurse came in and let us know we could go back and see Uncle Joe. I didn’t know this was going to happen. I thought they were going to let him pass and we would be in another room and that would be it. I was in such a daze.

We went back into the room and there was Uncle Joe, free from the mass of tubes and cables that had overtaken him before. We finally got to see his face clearly. The colored lights were gone and the room was silent. The nurses had turned away all the monitors. This was not like the movies. There would be no declining heart-rate and no flatlining, no long steady drone that announced the end. There was only us and him.

We stood and watched as Uncle Joe’s body fought to stay alive. His breathing was labored, his chest rising and falling rhythmically. He sucked in air and exhaled in quick loud breaths that flapped his lips. Some of us sobbed. Every so often I would hear Aunt Jean quietly exclaim “Oh Pappy…”

I don’t know how long we stood there. I only know that this moment was special. This was something I should remember. I was witness to the passing of a great man. Here I was with Uncle Joe’s wife, his son, his daughter and daughter-in-law, and his niece. And me. I got to represent my mother and brother and everyone else in the family who was not able to come in his final moments. And I realized this is how death should be, quiet and surrounded by friends and family. Painless. Not some thief in the night.

Soon, Uncle Joe’s breathing slowed and became softer and softer. His chest stopped rising so high. Eventually his lips showed less and less movement. But there were no beeps, no doctors to tell us it was over. Soon, he showed the faintest sign of life. An occasional breath. But that soon stopped too, and we could only assume the end had come.

We gathered close to his bed and said our goodbyes. Joey hugged his father and left with tears in his eyes. His wife did the same, and so did Vicki. Aunt Jean, Mamere, and I were left. What would I say when it was my turn? I reached under the blanket for his hand and held it. I said softly “Good-bye Uncle Joe” and kissed his forehead. And I walked out.

I was sad. But I also felt at peace. I felt privileged to be there. I felt privileged to bear witness to his passing. This was a man who fought in World War II and defended our country and the rest of the world from great evil. This was a man who escaped from his captors to freedom. This was a man who sired a large and wonderful family, a man who peered out from his glasses and exuded warmth, a short, potbellied man who had a recognizable shuffling gait when he walked. This was a man who always said my name with such enthusiasm and made me believe he was happy to see me, a man whose green tattoo on his arm always mystified me when I was young because it was indistinguishable due to wrinkles. This was a man who was loved by everyone. A great man. And I got to be there for his death.

My mother and aunt always said death is as much a miracle as birth. And being there to see death happen, I have to agree. It’s a special moment not many get to witness.

Afterward Vicki and Joey and Aunt Jean all thanked me for bringing Mamere down in the middle of the night. It meant so much to all of them that we could be there too, and I told them I was glad to do it. Mamere and I stayed at the beach another night.

I stayed out late that night, walking up and down the beach, sitting in the long shadows of tall hotels and looking up at the stars, watching the moon rise, casting out its bright reflection into the darkness of the sea. I met other people, teenagers down from Ohio for Grad Week, and was thankful to talk to someone about things other than why I was there and walking the beach alone late at night.

The next day I drove Mamere home. We listened to the score to “The Shawshank Redemption” by Thomas Newman and to Dave Matthews Band. It was a relaxing three hours. I don’t remember if we talked much. A few days later, I drove back down to the beach for that annual trip with my mom and brother (that I mentioned above). It was strange to be there again so soon after what had happened. I didn’t bring a razor with me either time I was at the beach. This is partly the reason I had a beard last year. I just decided to let it grow and see what happens.

--Cbake