03.17.08
Goodbye, Pepa
Jamie and I are recently returned from New York and the funeral of my grandfather, Raymond Pisani. He was in his nineties and had been declining for several months, presumably from advanced bladder cancer for which the family had decided to cease regular treatments. Pepa had been progressively senile and the treatments were extremely difficult for him starting about a year ago.
Jamie and I traveled east with the generous company of my brother and nephew, who both flew into Oakland rather than heading due east; this was a big deal especially for my brother, because he could have gone direct from LA and conserved more than a day of personal time. We so appreciated their company and assistance! We no doubt could have managed the trip, but it would have meant violating my minimum food and entertainment requirements for a 6+ hour trip with a toddler…
We spent 2.5 days with my extended Pisani family honoring my grandfather’s life. After Tuesday’s full travel day, Wednesday was spent visiting, both at Grandma’s apartment and at the funeral home. Thursday we attended the church and cemetery services, as well as a family luncheon after those. Thursday evening we looked through many old family photographs: Pepa’s parents and his youth; a special journal of pictures sent to him from the U.S., mostly from Grandma, while he was stationed in the Pacific (as an Army dentist) during WW2; and snaps of him as a father after the war.
There were military honors at the cemetery, and I asked my father afterwards if Pepa would have appreciated so much emphasis on his army service. I was under the impression that he really didn’t enjoy that era of his life, because he lost a dear brother in Europe (without getting to say goodbye due to an unexpected deployment followed by the death soon after; there probably wasn’t even time for letters to be sent) and also didn’t meet his oldest child for almost two years. Although his parents had emigrated from Italy and others made trips there to meet relatives and visit the ancestral soil, he always refused to leave the United States because of what had happened the first and only time he ever did so, during the war. However, I learned from my dad that quite to the contrary, despite the obvious tragic aspects of the war, my grandfather was otherwise quite happy with military service. He wanted to remain in the army as a career officer after the war, but my grandmother didn’t like the frequent relocations. He served in the reserves for about twenty more years, enjoying his two-week stints each summer and retiring as (I believe) a lieutenant colonel. He even tried to reenlist for the Korean War, but was “too old” at that point. My dad said that the regimentation and order were most appealing to him, the chain of command, as well as the fact that he could enjoy his dentistry without being in private practice. Pepa was a very meek personality and although he was a successful dentist from the moment he graduated at the top of class, the management aspects of private practice (getting people to pay you what you asked and so forth) were incredibly stressful for him.
You learn something every day!
Jamie was a trooper on this trip, enduring four straight days of extreme management of his time and energy. Despite, or perhaps as a result of, being used to much freedom, he was able to cooperate with the many strictures on him as a result of planes, trains and automobiles, funeral homes, churches and restaurants. Not to mention not-toddler-proof hotel rooms and apartments, and time zone changes. I won’t overdo the modesty; much of our success arose from my own skills, developed over twelve years of traveling with my kids, resulting in choices on my part such as the original asking for traveling companions both for transport and lodging, and continuing through such actions as encouraging quiet sticker play in the back of the church and so on.
I am very glad I made the trip. I don’t know that I needed it so much for personal closure; but I would have missed out on the shared reminiscing that was so wonderful, and I know the support to those who are feeling his loss more keenly than I was greatly appreciated.