It was so loud in class for the hour, I didn’t hear my phone. But when class was over, I saw several messages from my brother Alfred.
I loaded Alfie into the stroller and made my way back to Perry Street. I stuck a bud in my ear and listened to the messages.
The first message: “Val, it’s Alfred. Look, don’t worry. But I’ve taken Gianluca to NYU Med Center. Mom is on her way to the house. You can leave Alfie with her, and come over as soon as you can.”
A second message: “Val, we’re here at the hospital. Call me when you get this.”
A third message: “Val, call me.”
I began to run, pushing the stroller in front of me. Alfie thought it was fun. She was flying, and she giggled, looking up at me through the clear plastic.
A slew of thoughts entered my mind. It’s nothing, maybe he fell. Alfred would tell me that. He has no health issues. What could this be? He has a cigar once a year, if that.
Then I began to panic. My heart raced. I crossed Washington Street with the stroller and heard the blare of a car horn.
A cab stopped dead a few feet in front of me. I kept going. When I reached the shop, I called out, “Gabriel? Gabriel!”
He came out of the shop and took Alfie. “Go. They’re at NYU Medical Center.”
I didn’t even ask Gabriel if he knew anything. I didn’t think to ask. I just had to get to Gianluca.
Crossing the west side to the east in midmorning is impossible. The cab stopped and started. Finally I threw open the partition and screamed at the driver, “You have to get me there!”
I called Alfred’s phone. No answer.
I called my mother’s phone.
“Mom, where are you?”
“I’m almost at the shop.”
“Have you heard from Alfred?”
“He doesn’t know anything. He found Gianluca in the kitchen on the floor. He and Gabriel were in the shop, and they heard something fall. They called for Gianluca, and when he didn’t answer, Alfred went looking.”
I began to cry. “Mom, this isn’t good.”
“Valentine. Stop it. You don’t know anything. Pull it together. He’s a young man. He’ll be fine.”
I hung up the phone, and instead of calling Alfred, I held the phone in my hand and waited. Every awful scenario and worst outcome played through in my head. Why do I always jump to the worst possible conclusion? Maybe it was nothing. Maybe he’d just fallen and hit his head.
I paid the cabbie quickly and jumped out of the car. I ran into the hospital, going around the corner to the check-in desk, which I remembered from the day when I delivered Alfie.
They sent me to the fifth floor. I pounded the numbers in the elevator, willing it to move faster. I pushed through the crowd when the doors finally opened on the fifth floor.
Everywhere there were signs that read, “Cardiac Care.” My chest tightened with anxiety as I processed what those words meant, and what they might mean regarding my husband.
As I turned the corner to go to the nurses’ station, I saw Gianluca on a gurney. Alfred was with him, doing that double-step walk to keep up with the wheels as the orderly pushed Gianluca.
“Stop!” I shouted.
Alfred put his hand on the shoulder of the orderly.
I ran to my husband’s side. “What happened, honey?”
“I don’t remember.”
“The ambulance brought him here. I called 911,” Alfred explained.
I looked down at my husband’s feet. He was wearing one black sock and one navy blue one. I covered his feet with the sheet to keep them warm.
“He needs emergency surgery, Val. I’ll explain. Let him go. He needs to go,” Alfred said gently.
I took my husband’s face in my hands. “I love you.”
“Ti amo,” he said. “Where’s Alfie?”
“Mom is with her.”
“Don’t worry,” Gianluca said with a weak smile. “I’m not going anywhere.”
The orderly guided Gianluca through the doors to emergency surgery. Alfred signed the paperwork. There was nothing for me to do.
Alfred guided me into the visitors’ lounge. I sat down in the chair and began to shake. This is what it is like to be in an earthquake, I thought. The earth is rupturing and swallowing me whole.
Alfred handed me a cup of water. He put his arm around me. “Val, let me tell you what happened.”
“Mom told me how you found him.”
“He was unconscious. I called 911, and they were there within three minutes. And it was a good thing they got there quickly.”
“What happened to him?”
“His aorta ruptured.”
“He’s going to die, isn’t he?”
“No, we got here in time.”
“Are you sure?”
“It’s not anything you see coming. He’s had this condition since he was born. That’s what they told me, anyhow.”
“Is this even a good hospital for cardiac surgery?”
“They’re terrific. Don’t worry about that.”
“Oh, God, Alfred. The Christmas tree.” I shot out of my chair. Alfred followed me.
“What happened?”
“He hauled it up the stairs, and he put it in the stand. That’s what did it.”
“No, Val, you’re not listening.”
“And I gave him this stone sign, and he hauled it up the stairs too. Oh my God, that put the stress on his heart.”
“Val, they said it was congenital.”
“But something had to trigger it.”
“Don’t do this.”
“Alfred?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t leave me.”
Alfred sat with his arm around me for an hour. Tess arrived with Jaclyn. Moments after they arrived, my father came. They sat vigil with me as Gianluca was in surgery.
Every hour or so a nurse came out and told us how it was going. I didn’t press her, because I felt if I did, she wouldn’t be nice to my husband and somehow something would go wrong and he would die. He couldn’t die.
We had a life.
We had a baby to raise.
We had dreams.
I wanted to pray, but I couldn’t remember any words. As the surgery moved into the fourth hour, when I thought I was beginning to get a grip on what was happening, I was summoned into a conference room next to the waiting room.
I turned and saw that my sisters and brother and father were with me. Dad took the seat next to me at the conference table, placing his hand on mine. My dad doesn’t do things like that, but it didn’t dawn on me that the gesture meant anything either. I was now focused only on a happy outcome, how soon I could get my husband home, how we could plan Christmas and put up the tree and have our normal holiday.
I was convinced as I sat in the chair that everything would be absolutely fine. I saw Tess and Jaclyn look at one another nervously. Pamela was dabbing her eyes with a tissue, but she has allergies.
Alfred kept his hand on my shoulder. I looked up at him, and he stared at a point on the far wall, as though he was boring a hole into it. No one said a word. In my family, there has never been a gathering where there wasn’t constant noise and continuous conversation. Small arguments flare up like those paper wrappers lit with a match on confetti cookies, blowing out into a giant orange flame and then floating off like loose ash.
If I was going to worry, there was no point to it then. Whatever happened had already happened. I chose to believe that Gianluca was going to be fine. I clenched my fists so tightly, the nails broke through the skin on my palms. I didn’t know it then, but I was trying to hold on for dear life.
A doctor pushed the conference door open in his scrubs. His face held a particular intensity, but I didn’t read it as doom. He sat down at the table.
“Wh
o is Valentine?” he asked.
“I am.”
“I’m Ed Jansen, and I was your husband’s surgeon.”
“How is he?”
“I’m so sorry. We did everything we could—”
I held up my hand. “Please, Dr. Jansen, don’t say anything. Please. Just take me to him.”
My sisters protested. My brother tried to reason with me. My father kept saying, “Valentine, Valentine,” over and over again. Pamela began to sob.
“I want to see him now, Doctor. Right now.”
“Come with me.”
Dr. Jansen took me down a long hallway. The fluorescent light overhead was blinking. It was spitting out the smallest sputters of light and then dimming, only to charge back. It was like the rewind of a movie reel. The light came and went, and with it, any understanding of what could be seen.
My legs were only holding me up because I was determined to be with my husband. I thought of Alfie. She was with my mother. She was safe. I was not. My husband had died, but I would not say the words.
“If you’ll wait here, I’ll bring you in.”
The doctor went into a room, leaving me alone in the hallway. I looked down at my hand. I had forgotten to put my wedding ring on that morning. I couldn’t work wearing a ring, and, in a rush to get Alfie to her music class, I’d forgotten to put it on.
It was an ongoing joke in our house. My husband never took his ring off, and I never had mine on.
Did I doubt sometimes that I should be married? Is that why I wore the ring here and there and not always? I loved him, but did I really believe he was mine and I was his?
I’d been so busy trying not to surrender to true love, I’d pushed it away. I’d pushed him away. But now he was gone, and there would be no proving it any longer. I wasn’t given the gift of time, but I wouldn’t have known what to do with it had it been mine.
I remembered Orsola. Dominic. Gram. I would have to call them. But I wouldn’t until after I saw my husband.
Dr. Jansen came out of the room with a nurse.
“This is Elizabeth Beverly, my surgical nurse. This is Valentine, the wife of our patient.”
“I’m so sorry,” she said.
“May I see him?”
She handed me my husband’s file.
When someone dies in a hospital, they are pushed through a process similar to the one they have when they are born. One year ago, Alfie was weighed and measured, named and filed, on the third floor. She was tested and swaddled and delivered to me.
Today, on the fifth floor, my husband’s moment of death was noted: 11:03 a.m.
Cause of death: Aortic embolism. Age: Fifty-four. Married: Yes. There were lots of other lines filled with information, but I saw all I needed to see. I needed to see the yes. Proof that we loved each other. Proof that we’d decided to share our lives. Proof that we were married and that we were happy.
I looked at the married yes.
Nurse Beverly brought me into the room. Gianluca lay on a gurney, covered with a clean white sheet. There was a threefold blanket covering his calves and feet. I began to weep and placed my face against his, encircling my arm around his head. I ran my hands through his thick hair.
His body was still warm. I nestled into him. I decided to look at his chest, which was bandaged only where they’d entered his body. His stomach, his arms, his hands, and his neck were just as they were when I left him that morning.
I am someone who has to see it to believe. I have to understand why, and if there is no answer, I want a spiritual reason. Something told me, as I kissed my husband’s neck and hands and face for the last time, that I would never know.
The nurse let me stay a long time, until she couldn’t. She helped me to the door, and in my hand placed a bag with my husband’s wedding ring, his clothes, and his socks, one blue and one black. She pushed the door open to the hallway, and there, under the light that wouldn’t stay on, were my father and my brother. The men of our family. They waited for me like two good soldiers. They honored my husband with their concern for me. I didn’t have to be strong around them.
My father took one arm, and my brother the other. They walked me down the hallway, and I swear they carried me, as I could not feel anything. I wept the kind of tears that make no sound. But when I hung my head, I saw them hit the ground.
Before we pushed through the doors, I stopped and fished for my phone. I called my grandmother and Dominic. Alfred had let them know that Gianluca was having surgery.
“Dominic?”
“How is he, Valentine?”
“I’m so sorry. He didn’t make it.”
“Why? What happened?”
“His heart stopped, and they couldn’t save him.”
Dominic began to weep, and I could hear Gram encouraging him to be strong.
“Nessun padre ha mai voluto bene a un figlio tanto quanto io ho voluto bene a lui,” Dominic said to me.
“He knew, Dominic. He knew you loved him.”
I called Orsola. Alfred had also called her to let her know that Gianluca was in surgery.
“Orsola, it’s Valentine.”
“Oh no.”
“I’m sorry, honey. Your father loved you with all his heart.” As I mentioned her father’s heart, I broke down again. Gianluca Vechiarelli had been all heart to anyone who was lucky enough to be loved by him.
Orsola was bereft and could not speak. Mirella got on the phone. “Valentina, it’s Mirella. What happened?”
“He had a heart condition since he was born. And the worst happened.”
“I’m very sorry, Valentina.” Mirella’s voice broke. “I loved him too.”
Gianluca had liked to go to mass at St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral on Mott Street. Italians from the other side, and those of us from this one, find our deepest similarities in church. The mass is the same everywhere, as is the authority of the priests and the structure of the hierarchy. You feel the same sense of peace in Old St. Pat’s that you do in the pews of Santa Maria Gloria in Arezzo. Same candles to light, same kneelers, the same statues. The son of a Jewish mother had looked to Mary, another Jewish mother, for strength.
There was so much to do quickly, it was overwhelming. Gabriel was a lifesaver. He figured out how to get the family here from Italy. He made the beds and filled the refrigerator and watched Alfie.
My mother and sisters took care of the rest. They apply the same care to everything they do. They helped plan travel, lodging, and food. They printed up the programs and made runs to the airport. They did everything they could do for me, and didn’t feel like they could do enough.
I was two people the week Gianluca died. I got on the floor and played with our baby, and then I would turn away and cry for this little girl who would never have her father.
I slept in his T-shirt. I slipped my feet into his giant shoes. I held his wedding ring. I wore it on my thumb until, afraid of losing it, I wore it around my neck. I read every e-mail he’d sent and every one he’d received. I took a check that he had signed in his checkbook and put his signature next to his photograph on the mirror.
I went into the bathroom and put his toothbrush and razor in a ziplock bag and put it in my dresser. I sniffed the cologne in the bottle but did not dare spray it. It would have to last the rest of my life.
I went into the kitchen and examined the receipt of the last things he’d purchased at the grocery store. What good would it do me to know that he’d bought a bar of dark chocolate and three oranges? But I had to know. I had to know everything.
I went through pictures and pictures. I listened to his phone messages. I went through his phone and printed out all the pictures he had taken of Alfie and me. I printed out the last photo he took with Alfie the morning he died.
I was keeping busy, finding proof that we had loved each other and that what we had was real.
I had to know where every wedding picture was. I demanded that my sisters go to their houses and print out every photo they ever took of him and me and the baby. I was bossy and insufferable and miserable. I was learning how to be a widow.
Gianluca’s funeral took place on December 20, 2012, at St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral on Mott Street. It was five days before Christmas. There was a Christmas pageant and a concert. In the midst of all this celebration, my husband needed a proper funeral.
The crèche outside the church had been set in straw and lit in the manger. Lifelike Mary and Joseph, the sheep, and the Gloria angel, but no baby Jesus, because that was placed in the crèche on Christmas Day. There was a gaping hole in the scene, and it bothered me that the baby was not there. I wanted the holy family in full, all three of them, for the funeral. Alfred arranged it with the priest.
Inside, Old St. Pat’s had the scent of evergreen and blue spruce. It was decorated for Christmas, but the Advent wreath remained. My husband’s casket was set amid the anticipation of Christmas. There was something right about that, but it did nothing to make me feel redeemed. My daughter wriggled in my arms through the mass. I wanted her to be there, so someday, when she asked, I could tell her she was present.
Chiara and Charisma read the Prayer of Saint Francis aloud. All those devotional cards I had bought up on our last trip to Assisi had been distributed through the family and had some meaning for us now. The girls took turns reading from the cards we had brought from our vacation.
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life
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