La mia famiglia

Time on spring break means no news about Roma, of course, but time with family back in New England, my homeland. Like any person whose family has roots deep in New England, my actual heritage is a vague smattering of white European--mostly Scottish on my father's side and Portuguese/Irish/Italian on my mother's side. My great-grandfather (my mother's father's father) spent some time in Italia, I think; it's uncertain where he was born (he possibly was born on the voyage over from Italia to gli Stati Uniti), but his family moved back and forth a lot while he was growing up before eventually settling in New England. In Italy my family hails from the area around Campobasso, in the southeastern portion of the country, I think a fairly rural area.

Location of Campobasso in Italy, according to Wikipedia

Anyway, Italy is a place my grandfather has always wanted to see; his father and that side of his family grew up there, after all. He was in the Navy in World War II but spent most of that time in the Pacific and I'm not sure how much of Europe he has seen, never mind Italy. In any case, when my mother has told him (repeatedly, once for each time he's forgotten it) that I'm studying in Rome for ten weeks this fall, he has 1) asked if I need money, and 2) asked, half-seriously, if he can go.

When I was in sixth grade, my parents, my grandfather, and I went to the British Virgin Islands; this was 2003 or so. I think that was one of the last times my grandfather went anywhere outside of New England, and it's been several years since my grandfather has left a 20- or 30-mile radius around his former house, now legally owned by his son, my uncle. My grandfather lives in my hometown now, in the residential care unit of one of the branches of the state veterans' home system. For him, driving anywhere in a car is excitement, and he's mostly resigned himself to living under 24/7 guidance. If he didn't, he likely would have accidentally killed himself long ago, forgetting to turn off a stove or accidentally overdosing on medications or slipping in the shower and breaking his hip or...anything that happens when you literally lose your mind with dementia. He has a room with a bathroom (but no shower), a nice bed, and a TV. He still likes to walk around and talk to people, mostly the staff or visitors since many of his fellow inmates (as we so bitterly call the other residents at times) no longer speak anything even approaching sense. He eats three times a day, occasionally walks outside or around in the hallways, sleeps, watches TV, waits for visitors. The staff give him his medicines, bathe him regularly, help him dress, help him eat, help him shuffle along. It's like having a small child all over again. He knows the general season and time of day but does not generally remember the specific month or day it is. He still knows his family members, amazingly, and can tell stories from 60 years ago more easily than stories from a day ago.

He likely will never leave this general vicinity again and definitely will never, ever see Italy, see the place where his father and grandfather and all their forefathers grew up. While he knows he is old and forgetful and weak, I think he thinks that this is, in many ways, just an illness that could possibly somehow be suddenly reversed, or at least get better, well enough to travel. Italy will forever remain a bittersweet, childlike wish of his, but I will taste the smog of Roma and touch soil our ancestors touched in six months' time, whether or not he is still alive to know that when it happens. And he will probably ask, from time to time, to go until the day he dies.