Anna’s letter:
Casa Caleo
41 High St NORTHCOTE
1 June 2020
Dear family of Salvatore,
I hope you are well.
Here we are moving on into winter 2020 and our beloved dad becomes more and more physically compromised and mentally weary and extremely tired. His smile is still there, and he is (still) always happy to see us walk through the lounge room door.
Since I last wrote, dad’s ability to hold a conversation on the phone has diminished. He sleeps longer and wakes up a little more confused than before. His final independent activity, going into the bathroom alone, has become too difficult now, and he requires our help.
The palliative care nurses are coming three days a week (Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays) to check on his dressings and his mobility. They also monitor his medication and his mental state, giving us tips and information about what we need to look out for as his condition deteriorates. I do not know if the boys feel the same way, but I feel like this is probably the most important job I am ever going to do – so my concentration is intense!
This intense concentration also makes for exhaustion, so that when your gifts of soup, biscuits, cakes, dinners, flowers, wine, music, cards with thoughtful words, emails, and text messages with the same – they really help. Thank you. We are so grateful.
In fact, if you have not done already, we would ask you to send dad a letter or a card – yes, via snail-mail! – so that we can show it to him and read it to him. Put in a poem, or a joke, or a photo, or suggest a song. Dad would love it. It will make him smile. And what a smile!
Love,
Anna
PS. Please forward this message onto with wider Caleo/Lamaro family as you see fit.
And Daniel’s reponse:
Dear Anna,
Mum forwarded me your wonderful email. Thank you. I hope you don’t mind me sending this via email – rather than snail mail. If he’s able to read it on a device, or if you can read it to him – that would be wonderful. The other benefit is the link to a suggested song he might enjoy.
Love
Dan
Dear Uncle Salv,
I’ve been very sorry to hear you’re unwell. I have been thinking about and asking after you often.
It know it is unlikely I’ll get to see you again, Unlce Salv – so I hope you don’t mind me reaching out.
When I was younger, and at St Bernard’s, I used to walk home to Nanna and Pa’s place after school once or twice a week.
At that age, I was preoccupied, as many are I suppose, with the question of what I wanted to be when I grew up. I remember asking this of Nanna one afternoon, with one of my customary after-school rivitas with roma tomatoes, cheese and coz lettuce.
“What did you want to be when you were younger, Nanna?”
Nanna, responded by saying that, in those days, it was less common for women to go to university and study, and that her parents needed her help running the café in Sea Lake and then, after the family moved to The Strand, the various business here in Melbourne.
After further pause, I remember her saying, “…though I very much would have liked to study pharmacy, like Salv.”
This has always stuck with me. Joyce was so proud of you Uncle Salve, which I’m sure you already knew. She admired you incredibly, and loved you deeply, and would light up when speaking about you and your wonderful family.
I do recall how excited Nanna would get knowing that there was a pre-Christmas soiree at the Caleo’s in Northcote. The hum of people and all the family and friends (young and old) in their finery. Marry-Anne certainly set the bar high. Nanna loved these days like no other. I remember Joycey always having a champagne and orange juice (I know, as I remember pouring them!). It was usually the morning, after all!
I know mum shared the news with you that Khy and I are expecting a little baby girl in October. I can’t wait to be a dad. We’re absolutely elated. A granddaughter for mum and dad too – and a girl to buck the trend in the Goldsworthy household. When I spoke to Dad recently following his open heart surgery, we chatted about how lucky he was and I commented how grateful I was that he’d get to meet his granddaughter. “People have asked what was going through my mind and how I was feeling before I went under, knowing that I might not make it through”. He said, “I felt very calm, as the people I love know how much I love them”. I have no doubt that is true of you also, Uncle Salv.
One of my favourite poems, that Joyce had at her home in Coughlan Street for many years, is the following Irish blessing.
May the road rise up to meet you
May the wind be always at your back
May the sun shine warm upon your face
the rains fall soft upon your fields and until we meet again
may God hold you in the palm of His hand.
If memories serves, it was right next to the fridge sticker, “If you’re not Italian, fake it!”
In the days immediately preceding his death, Christopher Hitchens (one of my favourite authors) noted this meditation on mortality from Alan Lightman’s book Einstein’s Dreams
With infinite life comes an infinite list of relatives. Grandparents never die, nor do great-grandparents, great-aunts…and so on, back through the generations, all alive and offering advice. Sons never escape from the shadows of their fathers. Nor do daughters of their mothers. No one ever comes into his own… Such is the cost of immortality. No person is whole. No person is free.
I think it’s a wonderful perspective on mortality. I hope it offers some consolation.
I’ve been listening to this band a fair bit the last few weeks, and think you might enjoy this track. It’s Gallipoli by Beirut. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knHvi4A8v9Q Hoping it may transport you to warm sun and sea somewhere in the Mediterranean. It does for me.
Uncle Salv – I will always cherish our time together, and remember your huge smile and even bigger handshakes. Seeing you earlier this year by the Barwon River, albeit briefly, camping with your family and doing what you loved is a memory I am incredibly lucky to have.
With all my love to you, Uncle Salv.
Always,
Daniel.
Remembering Salv Caleo 