My Father Came From Italy

by Maria Coletta McLean

  “I don’t feel so good.”

  I look up toward the black telephone in the hallway, but Bob’s already there, dialling the numbers, giving the address. He’s barely hung up the receiver, when I hear the distant sound of the siren. In minutes the ambulance attendant is kneeling beside me, nudging me out of the way. She says she can’t find a vein to stick the IV into. My mother speaks from the living room to complain about the mess they’re making in the house, moving the kitchen table to get the stretcher in and cluttering the floor with the wrappers from the needles and the oxygen mask. When I look up at her, she’s wringing her hands in her lap.

  They won’t let me come in the ambulance; they say I can follow in my own car. I speak to my father as they lift him into the ambulance, “It’s okay, Dad. You’re going to ride in the ambulance. Bob and I will come in our car.”

  “Well, sure. I’m feeling better.”

  That’s the last thing he says to me. Just before they close the ambulance door, start up the wailing siren, I tell the female attendant to tell my father, “Your daughter says, ‘Ti amo.’ ” I tell her that he knows what it means.

  At the hospital, in the emergency room, my father slips into an endless sleep. He dies as gently as he lived. His death disturbs no one.

  Three days later, driving home from the funeral parlour, we pass through Toronto streets lined with coloured holiday lights. In my father’s hometown, there is a feast before Christmas. The heavy bells of San Nicola echo through the dark narrow pathways of Supino. The men, dressed in their festive red robes, carry the Saint of Special Favours on a wooden platform, long poles resting on their shoulders. The villagers place gifts of bread, or ciambella, at the Saint’s feet and offer silent prayers. The procession passes slowly. Every house has a light that illuminates the path where the Saint will pass. Many years ago, my grandparents placed candles at the end of the grape-lined laneway that led to their farm, now the villagers turn on electric lights. Everyone is hushed, solemn, wrapped in emotion. When the procession passes, you may feel a shiver, a sign from the Saint that your favour has been granted.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Thank you to my father, for telling me his stories; to Bruce Powe, my creative writing professor at York University, who provided encouragement and friendship; to Michelle Hammer, Bryna Wasserman and Collette Yvonne, friends in my writing circle who asked questions, requested rewrites, believed in me; to my brother, Don Coletta, for reading the first draft and encouraging me to send it to a publisher; to my sister, Linda Willcocks, who shared those 10 days in Supino with us and suggested the title for the book; to my cousins, Johnny and Suzy Paglia, who provided Italian translations, family stories and photographs; to my husband, Bob, and my daughter, Kathryn, who humoured me through the lonely writing days and the fits of doubt, the joys and disappointments; to my agent, Carolyn Swayze, who believed in me, inspired me and became my friend; to Carol Watterson and Joy Gugeler and the staff at Raincoast Books for making my first publishing experience a wonderful adventure.

  Find out more at http://www.mariacoletta.com/index.htm