Don't Sing at the Table (15 page)

Never complain about your physical ills.

I would visit Lucy after her stroke, when she lived in Leisure Hills Health Center in Hibbing, and the ride back down to the Twin Cities in my rental car was always awful. My last visit with Lucy was more difficult than any that had come before, because she told me that she was at the end of her life. She asked me to promise her that I would not cry, that I would be happy for her sake. I asked her if she was afraid, and she said she wasn't. “I cannot understand why God gave me such a long life.” And then she lifted her hand that had been paralyzed by the stroke with her good free hand. “Can you believe it?” she said.

At the end of her life, Lucy died of natural causes. She had a heart issue and was in the hospital, and when she woke up, she was surprised that she was still on earth. Shortly after, she went back to Leisure Hills, and there, she decided to let go. She ate less and less, slept more and more, and eventually she passed away on her own terms, in her own way, quietly and with dignity.

Her friends used words like “serene” when describing her. The local paper reported her as “grand.” Lucy had every reason to be angry, petty, and indifferent, because she had in many ways been cheated. The loss of her husband, and then her beloved son, who died seven years before she did (and this was a son who visited her twice a day, every day of her life), and the loss of her physical ability from the stroke, which meant she could not live alone and at home anymore, seemed like tragedies even for a woman who loved her solace. But my grandmother didn't complain—not about the pain, and not about the loss. When I visited her, she wanted me to get out and do things. She didn't want me to sit around with her—she wanted me to go and see things and come back and tell her about them. When I did, she would light up, relishing in every detail of my day. In a broader sense, this is what it has meant to be a writer. I go out, experience the world through characters and conversation, hopefully fetching the good stuff, the details that surprise and bind us, then bring all of it to the page. Lucy encouraged me to do the same for her.

Perhaps Lucy didn't complain because she didn't want me to look at life as anything but a journey full of possibility and wonder. She wanted me to have the joy she had known, without any of the sadness, knowing that was impossible, but wishing it so nonetheless. From her, I learned the very definition of love: when you truly love someone, you want the best for them, and their happiness is more precious to you than your own. When you love someone, you are on their side and take their part, believing them and fighting for what they need.

For Lucy, the harsh realities were not negotiable, but her reactions to them could be. She was not about to burden me or anyone else with the difficulties of what she was going through. She took her elderly years one day at a time, but it was not easy. That was her road, and she could handle it alone, as she had all the loss in her life. Lucy was not defined by that sadness; having lived it, it belonged to her. She walked with it, made peace with it, and eventually she was even free to let it go. She certainly had no intention of sharing those burdens with me. She wanted more for me, better for me. But what she could never know, even though I tried to tell her, was that I was better for having known and loved her. She lit up when I came into a room, but my heart burst just as full at the sight of her. I hope I see her again.

Chapter Ten
Belief

Lucy's twin daughters Ida and Irma on their First Holy Communion.

Just a Dream

Dreams were fascinating to my grandmothers and to me. We discussed them and analyzed them. Of particular interest were the dreams that included visits from those who had died. In fact, after the proper period of mourning a loved one has elapsed, the first question I ask is, “Has she visited you?” Or, “Has he?”

One of Lucy's most poignant losses was that of her mother. Lucy had left Italy at the age of seventeen, with the hope of returning home to Italy in a year or so. She sadly never returned, and she never saw her mother again. But one autumn night, October 3, 1950, asleep in her bed in Chisholm, she had a vivid dream in which her mother appeared to her at the bottom of the stairs of 5 West Lake Street. The dream was so clear that Lucy sprang out of bed and ran down the stairs, thrilled to embrace her mother. When she realized it was just a dream, she went back to bed. The next day, her brother called, informing her that her mother, Giacomina Grassi Spada, had died in Schilpario. The grief that consumed Lucy stayed with her for the rest of her life.

Viola shared a similar experience. One winter night in 1929, Viola was preparing to go to a dance in town with her sister. Her mother had been coughing, but they assumed it was nothing serious. It was bitter cold and snowing outside, but Viola insisted she was going to the dance. She had a new purple drop-waisted dress that she couldn't wait to debut. Viola loved Saturday nights; the band, the beaus, and the respite from her working world in the factory. Viola could be glamorous and gay and full of fun when she was off the clock. She and her sister set out for the trolley to go into town. Viola was twenty-two years old.

Word soon reached Viola and her sister at the dance that their mother had taken a turn for the worse. Viola rushed home, and she and the family gathered with the priest at her mother's bedside. As my great-grandmother got worse, the priest, Father Ducci, prayed on his knees, next to the bed, through the night. A doctor arrived, only to deliver the devastating news that nothing could be done. Giuseppina Covre Perin died before dawn the next morning, at the age of forty-three, mother to six children, the youngest, Lavinia, only five. Viola ripped the purple dress in two and vowed to never wear purple again, as it had brought tragedy upon the family.

My great-grandfather was bereft. On the morning that they returned from the funeral, a local farmer came to the house and pounded on the door. When my great-grandfather opened the door, the ashen-faced neighbor insisted that he had seen my great-grandmother walking in the field along the property line between his farm and theirs that morning. Knowing it was impossible, they still clung to the hope of what the neighbor had seen, and the entire family set out on foot to find her. They tried to imagine that the worst had just been a dream and that they would all soon awaken and she would be with them again.

Viola said the reality of going up into the field and looking for her mother, and not finding her, was devastating. Viola begged God to bring her mother back, but when He didn't, Viola moved on to grieve for the loss of her mother her whole life. She shared the pain of this deep sorrow and regret with Lucy.

A good mother is irreplaceable.

The Infant of Prague

One day, I was with Viola, and she drove past a yard sale. She hit the brakes hard and threw the car into reverse. Her daring behind the wheel of a car was something to experience, I promise you. Something had caught her eye in the yard sale. She backed up in front of it and handed me a five-dollar bill. “Go and get the Infant of Prague,” she said. I reluctantly got out of the car, went to the lady holding the sale, and asked her how much she wanted for it. The seller wanted five bucks for the statue and the costumes, but if I didn't want the costumes, the statue was three bucks. I went back to Viola and explained the terms, and she told me to buy the entire Infant of Prague kit, clothing included.

When I got back in the car, Viola pulled out on to the road. This wasn't a good statue. It wasn't like the Italian, hand-painted plaster version Viola had in her living room, with artful velvet costumes to be changed on High Holy Days. The orb the Infant held was cheap, and the overall effect was more poolside decor than chapel-ready.

“Gram, this is the worst Infant of Prague I have ever seen.”

“I couldn't leave him there.”

“What do you mean?”

“A sacred relic in a yard sale is
not
right.”

Now I have the Infant to remind me of that day, and now I too cannot part with it. I have placed a Post-it on the base of the statue: Do not put in yard sale.

A Green Mountain

A couple of weeks before Viola died, I stayed with her. Now, this is the strange thing, looking back on this night. She knew the end of her life was coming soon, but I was going to convince her it was not the end. The more I tried to lift her spirits, the more agitated she became. Finally she dozed off, and I soon did too. At one point, she cried out. I woke up and turned on the light. She said, “I'm in so much pain, I can't even cry.”

So I said, “Well, let's not try and sleep. I'll go and get you a snack.” I went downstairs, made tea and bread and butter, and brought it to her. Viola was not a touchy-feely person, and I never saw her reach out and stroke someone's arm or pat their hand. She would hug me, but with a coda of quietly pushing me away with her hands after a few seconds. And when it came to kissing, she'd just extend her cheek, and I'd kiss
her
. It's how I imagine affection is shown in the royal family in Great Britain. There was never anything fussy about Viola's affection. It was slightly military.

But I knew she was in agony, and I knew from my Reiki sessions in New York City that rubbing someone's feet can be a tremendous source of pain relief. When I was a kid, the washing of the feet on Holy Thursday was the greatest challenge for me, as I found the entire exercise hilarious, even thought the priest explained that this is what Jesus did. For me, it was just another example of how difficult it was for me to be Christ-like. But tonight, she needed it, so I rubbed my grandmother's feet.

“I had the strangest dream,” Viola said. “There was a very tall, green mountain, and your grandfather was at the highest peak.”

“Was he young or old?” I asked.

“Young. Like the day we married. And he said, ‘Come with me, Viola.' He was smoking a pipe.”

(I knew the pipe well, and the Blackjack tobacco he used to pound into it. Once in my twenties I followed a man smoking a pipe for three blocks up Sixth Avenue when he was smoking the same brand, just so I might remember this detail of my grandfather.)

Viola holds her son, Anthony, “Sonny,” in 1933, with Father Ducci, Michael, and friends.

Viola continued, “And I began to head for the base of the mountain to climb it, and there in a rocking chair was an old woman. When I got closer to her, I saw that she was one of the machine operators at the mill. She pointed for me to follow my grandfather up the mountain. I said to her, ‘But what about you?' And she said, ‘I stay here.' ”

Immediately, in my denial and zeal to be peppy, I chirped, “Well, they're helping you get well.”

Viola looked at me and said, “I'm not going to get better.”

I remembered visits when I was a teenager, and how I used to check and make sure she was breathing at night, afraid she would die. And one night she caught me and told me that she used to do the exact same thing with her grandfather, Jacinto, who emigrated when he was eighty-eight years old to live with his son and his family. Jacinto lived to be a hundred and one years old. One night he woke up, and she told him in Italian, “I just wanted to see if you were okay.” And my great-great-grandfather said to Viola, “When you are old, someone will take care of you, because you took care of me.”

I was trying to take care of her now. But I didn't feel good about it, I felt helpless. The tea was cold, and the bread and butter was too much for her to eat. She tried, but then pushed it aside.

And then I asked her the biggest and most looming of all questions when a person is dying: “Are you afraid?”

I pictured all those mornings she went to Mass, and all the rosaries she said, and how her lips would move silently saying the Hail Mary as she cooked. And how she said “Jesu, Jesu,” when she heard bad news. And how she'd ask anyone for money when raising it for the church, and how she'd make you buy a ticket to the annual Cadillac Dinner. And how when you needed to sell raffle tickets for a fund-raiser, she'd take a stack and sell every single one. And how she'd bake a pie and leave it for someone sick, and how she went to every single wake and funeral, whether she knew the person well or not, whether she actually liked them or not. Her reasoning was: everybody should have a standing-room-only funeral. And how no matter when you dropped in, she could make you a feast from a bare cupboard—bread and salami, an egg in marinara tossed through greens, peppers thrown into a skillet with onions and a piece of sausage on the side, a glass of wine, crisp ginger cookies in a tin with hot coffee—there was always something for you, something for the unexpected guest. I thought of how she'd cut the grass at my grandfather's grave, hauling an actual push mower in the back of the station wagon, me praying that we wouldn't hit a curb and explode in a butane fire from the tin gallon of gas at my feet, the nozzle stuffed with an old rag. And how she'd put flowers on her husband's grave every week until she died, and trim the weeds, and wash the headstone. And how suddenly it was
her
turn. I didn't know what I would do without her. I was so sad, I actually thought, I won't be able to do
anything
ever again once she is gone. I'd trade my future to have her here forever with me.

I wanted her to tell me that she wasn't one bit afraid, that this dying business was as natural as getting your hair done or sewing a hem. And I already knew that while it may have been natural, it was also lonely. I couldn't do the thing for her that she'd done for me. I could not make her feel secure when she needed it the most. Viola knew it, and I knew it too. She was on her own.

She said, “You know, Adri, you get to this point, and you can't pray anymore.”

“Sure you can.” I tried to be upbeat. Again. I reminded her of the First Fridays, the novenas, the rosaries. How about the old God Help Me? Three little words. How hard is that? “Come on, Gram.
Pray.
”

“I can't. I've tried. The one thing I thought I could do, I can't do anymore.”

“Well, Gram, I guess that means I have to pray for you.”

She looked at me, and her expression was so funny that I laughed. “I know, me of all people.”

“Yeah, you.”

And we laughed. We could always laugh.

Tumult

There is such tumult around religion. God is supposed to be in the blessing business, and indeed He is, but then, when bad things happen, when horror gives way to tragedy and then to loss, what are we to make of it? Isn't religion supposed to help us?

Arguments about religion come at us from all sides—many that make sense, some that merely incense, and others that make a believer feel helpless and alone, which of course is the exact opposite of living in the limitless possibility of the human spirit. Wars are started in the name of religion, but sometimes other things start wars too: money, land, energy sources, and the explosion of long-festering jealousies. Religion is supposed to be all-inclusive, but pretty soon a list is revealed of folks who aren't welcome inside those bright red doors. What we do to one another as human beings is often terrible. Our capacity to love, however, is greater than any differences we have, or the labels we are slapped with, or the lines we are asked to form—or at least, that's what I tell my daughter.

I grew up in a southern coal-mining town, buried deep in the glorious Blue Ridge Mountains, where less than 1 percent of the population was Roman Catholic. A poor missionary order of priests and nuns called the Glenmary, whose mission was to serve in the poorest places in our country (Appalachia qualified), is still there, fighting the good fight and ministering to the people of the mountains. Their mission of serving the poor and seeking social justice in all things (employment, politics, fair play) and their devotion to honoring the land and the creatures that inhabit those majestic mountains are honorable and decent, and pretty basic. Not too many folks would argue with them.