Saying Good-Bye

I wrote this in honor of my mother at the time of her passing.
Original version delivered at St. Joseph's RC Church, Hewlett, NY, on January 7, 2020; expanded version written during the month of January 2020

Growing up, I remember people who spoke of my mother always mentioned her toughness.  To my little girl brain this kind of made sense:  Tessie was born during the Great Depression into an enormous family of Italian immigrants, # 9 out of 10 children.  In the Rockaways.  How even as a child, she wouldn’t take any guff or BS from the stupid boys or the mean girls in the neighborhood who picked on her sisters.  How time and time again she would come home after another scuffle at school, her hair a tangled mess, her clothes torn, and Grandma Greco would fret, “Oh, no, Teresina, not again!”   From birth, Clairie, Tessie and Chickie, #s 8, 9 and 10 in the Greco family line-up, formed an unbreakable bond of sisterhood and friendship that lasted a lifetime.  Aunt Chickie told us that she spoke to my mother every day.  That’s 365 conversations times 80+ years … Their slightly younger niece Reenie completed this inseparable group, D’Artagnan to their girl Three Muskateers.

We heard stories of the Greco family growing up in the Rockaways, the hardship of living through the war, the joy of summers at the beach with the neighborhood boys, hanging out at Nanny Katie’s food stand, the original food truck … 

Our favorite story is the one in which my teenaged mother sees for the first time a well-built, handsome man riding his white palomino.  She stops in her tracks, and asks, “Who is that?!?”  Well, that broad-shouldered hunk was John Quadrozzi.  Love at first sight?  Definitely.  That moment launched their life-long love affair.  My mother knew her heart, and she was not going to let this one get away.  So she let my father chase her until she caught him.  They married in 1955, and stayed together for 49 years until my dad’s death 15 years ago.

Their early days together were no picnic.  The struggling young couple first lived in a small apartment in Far Rockaway, then moved in with Katie and Gus into the top floors of a faux Victorian on Greenport Rd. when the babies started coming.  Five of them in six years.  Making for a total of 11 adults, kids and babies sharing 2.5 bathrooms.  These were chaotic, busy, happy years of early mornings, hard work, family dinners, celebrations, arguing, and laughter.  Despite Nanny’s delicious cooking, not an easy arrangement for a young mother, living with so many in-laws.  But as I said, my mother was tough.

Her grit was tested again and again.  She could be a fiercely protective mama bear.  I remember my mother marching down Meadow Road to challenge some injustice perpetrated by a neighbor towards one of her kids.  But don’t think for a minute she ever let us get away with anything - she caught everything, and called us on everything.  Read:  She was not afraid to punish us for being stupid or bratty or, when we got older, for staying out late.  The house on Meadow Road was a hive of activity, there was always house work and yard work to be done, a zoo of pets to be fed, Ferrantes and Cassattos, neighbors and friends always stopping by.  Saturday night meant canasta with next door neighbors Bermie and Elaine. The Hewlett Harbor house was more sedate, except maybe for the shopping excursions to Loehmann’s with Harriet, and managing 5 surly, rebellious teenagers.

My mother spent more time in hospitals than most medical professionals.  She stood vigil when her 19 year-old son John was nearly killed by a drunk driver in a pick up truck.  He needed months and months of surgeries and painful therapies, and my mother ventured to Lenox Hill Hospital from Long Island on a nearly daily basis to be by his side.  She was grace under fire.  Her strength and support and fortitude never wavered, ushering John through his long recovery.  Again when my father fell ill, going from hospital to hospital to rehab to hospital with various illnesses and complications that would take his life a year later, my mother’s calm, caring  presence at his bedside nearly every day provided invaluable love and comfort.  

You see, my mother knew when to hold on, and when to let go.

She herself spent quite a bit of time in hospitals, as a patient.  There were the births of her 5 kids.  Then her 1st bout of breast cancer at age 39.  In a time when women blindly followed doctors’ orders, my mother defied them by walking out of the hospital and seeking cutting edge, less invasive treatment with cancer pioneers elsewhere.  This was pretty radical for a woman in the 1970s, challenging the opinions of her male doctors.  As I said, she was tough.  

Tessie’s toughness was tested again and again when my father passed and she became responsible for the family businesses.  She now had to deal directly with difficult personalities and make quite a few difficult decisions that impacted many.  Though we all may not have agreed with her choices, we all have to appreciate that she acted according to what she truly believed in her heart to be right and just, and to respect her conviction to follow through on those beliefs.  

When she lost her Johnny after nearly 50 years of marriage, she moved out of the big unfinished Hewlett house, which she had moved into from the smaller unfinished Inwood house.  You see, marriage to a master builder had its caveats.  Like the cobbler's son who has no shoes, for her entire married life, my mother was destined to live in an a construction site of uncovered floors, peeling walls, entire rooms stuffed with nails and saws and wood and other building materials.  It wasn't until she moved in the Garden City condo that she got to enjoy living in a beautifully appointed home, which she herself decorated.  Is was during this time that she began experiencing some minor health issues which eventually became major. She laughed when I called her the Bionic Woman.  She had quite a bit of hardware in her from various surgeries:  breast implants from reconstruction, a new hip, and new shoulder, a new Aortic heart value.  She was the best patient ever:  patient (literally), pleasant, cooperative, diligently following post-op instructions - she even enjoyed the food!  She almost considered it a spa holiday, paid for by insurance.  I think she liked being fussed over, especially after spending so much of her time caring for others -

A few fun facts about my mother:  She loved to sing.  Absolutely adored singing.  And she was completely tone deaf.  She especially loved torturing her kids with her out-of-key, atonal rendition of "Tie a Yellow Ribbon."

My mother kept an immaculate house.  Quite a feat with so many messy beings underfoot, constantly undoing her hard work.

As a young bride and mother, she was perhaps the worst cook ever to enter a kitchen.  On more than one occasion, we would come home from school to find a severed lamb's head, slack-tongued, gracing the kitchen sink, or foul-smelling spongy tripe boiling on the stove, or stinky fishy baccala soaking on the counter.  We would turn and run shrieking out of the house in horror.  During our childhood years we endured shoe leather pork chops, hockey puck hamburgers, various and sundry vegetable mush.  Our dog Wolfie grew fat on the food we slipped him under the dinner table when she wasn't looking; her peasant roots were far too exotic for our suburban mid-century American taste buds.   Then, miraculously, sometime during the 70's, my mother became one of the best cooks I've ever known.  Her meatballs - labor intensive half-day affairs that messed up the entire kitchen - were second to no one.  (Even you, Nanny.  Sorry.)  In addition to perfecting her family's traditional and holiday dishes, she and my father went on to invent a few new unique delicious dishes that her kids continue to replicate, or try to.

My mother was an extraordinary natural beauty.  She could wipe her flawless complexion with a damp washcloth, dab on a little Oil of Olay, pull her hair back into a ponytail, and look perfect in 30 seconds.  When she dressed up, she looked like a movie star.  Age did very little to mar her beauty, even in her final days in her hospital bed, the staff would look at her chart and do a double-take, thinking her age was a typo.  Of course she loved this.  Who could blame her.  

She, along with Aunts Clairie and Chickie, helped their sisters Agnes and Celia when they got old, seeing that they were comfortable, well cared for, and had everything they needed. Tessie had a special relationship with each of her 9 siblings.  She had strong bonds with  a long list family, friends, in-laws, nieces and nephews that transcended time and distance. They picked her up, dropped her off, invited her to holidays and other celebrations, called and visited her, sent her cards or flowers or candy, stepped in for us after her move to FL.  Aunt Eva, Aunt Peggy, Aunt Connie, Aunt Judy were like sisters; she was crazy about Diana, Michelle, Marianne, Maria, Linda and her girls,, Paul, Caroline, Joannie, Eddie, Anne, Nancy, Barbara, Bobby and Nick; and honorary daughters Michele and Valerie.  Please know she was crazy about you, and appreciated every kind gesture.  (This is by no means a complete list, please forgive me in advance if I failed to mention you.)  And grandkids Darien, Quinn, Xiana, Isabella and Chiara - no one was as dear to her as you.

Alas, after 30+ years cancer-free, the disease and other ailments eventually caught up with her.  She decided that she didn’t want to fight this good fight any longer, that the pain was too great, the she was just too tired, her quality of life too compromised; that any gains the medical community could offer (which were highly unlikely) would be too small and temporary, not worth the high toll they would take on the quality of her remaining life.

We spent quite a few Christmases in hospital like settings.  This December, after several days semi-conscious, Tessie was overjoyed when she opened her eyes to discover her 5 children in Florida at her bedside  It was our great gift, a Christmas miracle, to see her happier and more comfortable and relaxed these last weeks than she’d been in years.  Smiling, cracking jokes, being sassy, barking orders.  For 2 weeks we helped feed her, wash her hair, brush her teeth, apply her Oil of Olay.  We were so fortunate to have this time with her.  Then, as Pandora played Deano's  "Volare" and Bobby Darren's "Somewhere Beyond the Sea", we said a final good-bye to our mother as she left us right around midnight on Dec. 31st.

She just knew when to hold on, and when to let go.  To let go and let God.  That is tough.  That is strength.  That is grace.  That is sacred.  And like my mother, that is beautiful.