MY ITALIAN DAD IN NEW YORK

LOUIS "LOU" SALVATORELLI

b November 16, 1917

A loving, living memoir of my father and of

my experiences as his caregiver.

Geraldine M. Salvatorelli

One part of

Three Shots Fired

A Life of Yelling, Laughing ...and Hiding

Gallery of Dad

Click any picture for enlargement and more

FACT: ACCORDING TO A U.N. STUDY BY 2150

ONE OUT OF EVERY THREE PEOPLE WILL BE 60 YEARS OLD!

Dad's Women

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FACT: 76 MILLION BABY BOOMERS ARE APPROACHING OLD AGE

FACT: THERE ARE 42 MILLION FAMILY CAREGIVERS.

THEY ARE PREDOMINANTLY ADULTS.

WHETHER OUT OF LOVE OR GUILT OR BOTH

ADULT CHILDREN HAVE BEEN RISING TO

THE OCCASION AND CARING FOR AN AGING PARENT OR PARENTS.

(See: NYT, The New Old Age blog, "We Are Everywhere" by blog founder Jane Gross,

and author of "A Bittersweet Season: Caring For Our Aging Parents -- and Ourselves)

CHILDREN OF VETERANS RETURNING FROM THE IRAQ WAR

ARE JOINING THESE RANKS IN LARGE NUMBERS.

Dad's last chance for Love!

But he and Elly just didn't hit it off.

I was pretty shocked when Elly walked into the

funeral parlor where they first met.

Elly looks a lot like his X, Eva.

(see if you agree, above photo of Eva)

The "New Normal"

Geraldine (Daughter, 60) & Lou (Father, 91)

FACT: AMONG THE 65 MILLION CAREGIVERS

THE MAJORITY ARE CARING FOR SOMEONE

OVER 50!

DAD

Killing Time at the Mt. Carmel "Italian" Senior Center

on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx. He wasn't going there

for fun, dancing or the food "I only eat two meals a day," but because wanted

me to get a look at senior life. "I'm too old for these places,

I don't look it, everyone thinks I'm their age."

At 91 in the above photo he was "too old," and I was too young.

BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS:

A BITTERSWEET SEASON: CARING FOR OUR AGING PARENTS

by Jane Gross

PASSAGES IN CAREGIVING: TURNING CHAOS INTO CONFIDENCE

BY Gail Sheehy

Fact: Adults over age 80 are the fastest growing segment of the population;

most will spend years dependent on others for the most basic needs.

That burden falls to their baby boomer children.

from The New Old Age blog. Jane Gross and Paula Span.

"El Guayabera"

"El Guayabara"

Dad, while Italian, was a great lover not only of Spanish women but of the Mexican guayabara shirt, a

Mexican wedding shirt that is also worn at funerals. The shirt has long been a symbol of the working class

it is a long-standing symbol of solidarity amongst Hispanics living in America.

On September 24, 2010 a powerful statement (about the guayabera as a Hispanic laborer's "uniform")

was made by United Farm Workers President Arturo Rodriguez.

Appearing as a primary speaker at a U.S. congressional Subcommittee hearing on Immigration,

Citizenship and Border Security, President Rodriguez wore a finely tailored guayabera.

It's appropriate Dad would have adopted the shirt as his official retirement uniform the way other men

adopt velour since he's truly a Studs Terkel, Damon Runyonesqe kind of guy. Dad started wearing

the guayabara when he was dating Celeste, his Cuban girlfriend and commuting to work from East New York.

He owns about twenty buayabaras in assorted colors. He uses the pockets like drawers. Before he quit smoking, one pocket

was for cigarettes, another for the lighter, comb, pens leaving the bottom two for tissues and i.d. card.

AMSTERDAM NURSING HOME

December, 2011

94th Birthday

He has matching p.j.'s but prefers the mismatched look.

I learn not to argue with a stubborn,proud, eccentric Italian man of 94.

I think it symbolizes his marriage to my mother. A mismatch.

He has not stopped rebelling against her.

Whatsamatta, I'm growin a mustache.

Mealtime at The Amsterdam House Nursing Home in Manhattan. Dad's a

soup freak who attributes his longevity to a good diet.

He has eliminated many carbohydrates and all beef, ham, pork, veal and meats from

his diet with the exception of chicken, turkey and the occasional meatball.

He eats these all day long like

cat nip. I think they take the place of cigarettes.

Dad likes to talk and I enjoy making conversation with him and I'm lucky

his mind while a lot slower is still sharp, lucid and full of observations and opinions.

It was an adjustment to navigate my way around the slower way his elderly mind works

and interacts with his brain and during that time I found the book listed below

very helpful.

BOOK RECOMMENDATION:

HOW TO SAY IT to Seniors: Closing the Communication Gap with Our Elders

by David Solie, M.S., P.A.

And like many Italians, his thoughts are

best expressed by using the hand.

Yup. You. I'm talken'ta'you. When you reach

my age you eat all the ice cream you want too!

You follow me.

Summer, 2011

Grandaughter visits.

Priceless.

Adrienne, Granddaughter, mother of 3 steals

away from home for a G-pa visit.

Lou with great grandaughter Allyson (left)

and her best friend Katie.

Yakking it up intergenerational style.

2010

Dad's 1st nursing home haircut with

hairdresser Sondra in the nursing home beauty parlor.

I had to check her out to make sure she was nice and he would be

well behaved. In the Bronx, while Dad was still living at home,

we went through four barbers exhausting almost every

one in the neighborhood.

Now it's his favorite place. He hits the beauty

parlor every Thursday, whodathought?

I never imagined when I signed him up he would

do something like this.

That's me in the beauty parlor mirror, special affects.

He was driving nurses and aides crazy with his

container alignment system for cookies and milk.

So I had to find a small table for his big table.

Summer, 2011

Bertha Hope, jazz pianist, member of the Jazz Musicians Foundation

brings music to the Amsterdam House and other homes and assisted living facilities.

Bertha & Kim Clarke playing the skinny bass.

Percy Brice, legendary drummer who played with

Harry Belafonte, George Shearing & Sarah Vaughn to name a few

performs at Dad's nursing home, The Amsterdam House.

In the background, Alex Layne on bass.

Bertha Hope and Percy Brice

Annette St. John, singer

Annette St. John, and Kim Clarke working it out on base.

LOU at 93 yrs. old!

Summer 2011

Rare trip out of his room into main meeting hall at The Amsterdam House Nursing Home.

Dad's just not crazy about leaving his room...he's always been a homebody.

Again, with the hands. He's telling me how the room is

able to be identified according to the wallpaper by resident's with memory problems.

Proof of Age?

December, 2010

First days, in rehab, at the Amsterdam House Nursing Home, NYC.

Dad, wearing sunglasses "don't tell anyone I'm here."

In the first weeks after arriving in the nursing home,

all I heard was "when you gonna get me out of here."

Then there were moments of adjustment and acceptance.

This is a good place. You did good. I guess this is where

I'm gonna die. I guess I live here from now on.

Nothing as joyous as Elisabeth stopping by with a piece of

lemon meringue pie from Tom's. You remember Tom's from

Seinfeld. Dad lives right up the block from Tom's. It feels

more appropriate that I should be visiting him there and no

longer schlepping homemade meals for him up on the D-train to the

Bronx in my wheelie case as I had been 5 years.

Autographed photos of Jerry, Elaine, George & Kramer on the wall

inside but when I spoke to the owners about the profits generated as a result of

their celebrity, they didn't seem that excited.

2011 Westy Award Recipient

Marion Gambardella, spiritual leader, and ordained minister at the prestigious

2011 Westy Awards where she was a recipient for her outstanding

leadership in the area of caregiver stress.

Marion runs Caregiver Stress therapy meetings once a month in Manhattan,

helping those of us who were sinking badly from it at one time or another.

Coincidentally, Marion's husband, the famous opera singer, Giuseppe Consiglio

is a resident of The Amsterdam Nursing Home with my Dad.

DAD'S PRE NURSING HOME DAYS

Early Winter, 2010

Rocking it out at the Sedgwick Senior Center, 2010.

This traveling trio was about to come to an end.

Bob was ordered by his doctor's to no longer drive.

causing him to loose interest in going out to the centers.

2009

Dad, holding court on Mom's famous love seat anything but.

Briggs Avenue, Bronx, NY.

Getting bread ready to feed birds on his fire escape. The birdman of Briggs

I don't think there were enough legal, rent paying tenants left in the building to

complain. Photo in background with great grandaughter Julia at her Holy Communion party.

My brother wouldn't attend if I was there so I missed that one too. I have been banned from

the majority of family gatherings in involving his children. Tsk, tsk. I must be a terrible person.

Lou, at bus stop on way from Bailey Avenue Senior Center

about to soon be closed due to lack of attendance. We had to

take two buses. He loved to torture me with these arduous trips.

He spent many years frequenting the center in his younger old years

and wanted to reminisce. So we went a few times one of those afternoons he got a chance

to reunite with cook a tiny, cute Hispanic woman named Rosa I think Dad had a

crush on her. He met his primary care doctors at this center now it

has become a bit of a senior wasteland with a huge flat screen t.v.

where on one of those afternoons we watched the Michael Jackson funeral then decided to no longer

return there because it was too depressing. He used to know some of the Hispanic people who lived

in the senior building upstairs from where the center's main meeting rooms. We read

about the closing in the New York Times and never looked back.

Shortly after our last trip to the Bailey Avenue Center, Dad had to stop

traveling by bus. It had become too exhausting and stressful not just for him.

St. Philip Neri Church where I received my first Holy Communion, Confirmation, graduated and

attended High Mass in Latin and sang with a powerful pipe organ in the background along with

the Welch Chorale led by John Welch who was murdered years later in the lobby of his building.

Dad attended the senior center located in the basement below until there was a serious fire in the church

and the center had to be relocated. That's another story.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DAD

Celebrating 92 Birthday in Mc Donald's on 204th Street,

Bronx, NY

Dad thinks he's spotted his ex-girlfriend Eva who lives

nearby. Florence invited Eva to join us but she declined.

Dad when he realizes the woman was not Eva just someone

who looked a lot like her.

That's when he started doing what we all

do in situations like that -- eat a strawberry ice cream sundae.

Florence a good friend, award winning painter celebrating

her birthday around same time.

Florence was a free lance sketcher at Vogue magazine

same time Andy Warhol was free lancing. When she heard

he was being paid more she demanded to be paid same thing

and she got it.

Another day older. He says that every year on his birthday.

Bedford Park Barber Shop.

He went through about

four barbers in one year.

And refused to shave so once a week we

had to venture out to barber shops where

he'd find something wrong with every one.

That's my shadow behind Dad who is leaning against fence

on Mosholu Parkway, Bronx, NY, my childhood park

and his favorite, peaceful place to be. Being a caregiver starts to feel

like being a god. That's what my shadow looks like

cast over the balding grass where I used to sleigh ride when I was

a child.

Caregivers are definitely a godsend to the elderly

who are challenged by combination of emotions -- frailty, loss, fear, pride.

There were days I went to

ridiculous lengths to cheer

him up.

And there were days he let me know straight

out there were certain things that were not

going to change like his aversion to the

telephone and computers but never to

cake (see photo below).

Last time Dad wore that jacket.

It's p.j.'s now all day

all the time.

The Yankees stink this year.

August, 2010

Hey.

Where's the *#*# doctor already. I'm waitin a half hour.

2009

Oh, Hi, Dr. D.

MT. CARMEL ITALIAN SENIOR CENTER

August, 2010

Bob who drove everyone around especially to shops on

Arthur Avenue. He'd wait patiently as we darted in and

out getting our favorite Italian delicacies.

Marie (on the right wearing the cap) bakes the meanest cakes

in the east.

Charlie in the middle is the American Bandstand star on the

senior set.

TANGLE WITH THE TANGO AND YOU'LL TANGLE WITH HIM

BOB

singer, pianist, driver, father, husband, grandfather, ladies man

Look Lou how many times do I have to tell you

I Don't Know the Words to Honeysuckle Rose.

Amazing voice!

She made me cry.

The Harbor Inn, City Island, Bronx, New York.

Dad with his best man, Cousin Paul's, wife Suzie.

You never know who is going to be left in the end.

Winter, 2006

The Broken Denture

& The Neighborhood Dental Lab out of

Sanford & Son.

Dad had hardwood floors in his bedroom where he dropped his dentures

late morning, breaking them in half. It was in the first few minutes after I had

arrived and I often spent that time relieved to learn that it was not him lying on the floor injured.

Those initial hours after arriving in the Bronx, no matter how often I repeated the ritual

were inevitably mixed with annoyance, culture shock and my recollections from Thomas Wolfe's

classic, You Can't Go Home Again and the vexing question, how much longer will I be doing this.

. "I got this guy right in the neighborhood," Dad says. And we bundle ourselves up and

take the walk to Jerome and 202nd Street. "This guy does all the work for the dentists

and the dentists get paid the big bucks. He told me to come in anytime I got a problem."

So there we are in a store that doesn't look like it has ever seen a good cleaning with

boxes and solutions piled up everywhere with a cat meandering around it all.

Owner, dental lab, technician, mechanic, and cat lover.

Your comments are welcome at

ItalianStoria@aol.com

see also

Geraldeena.com