The Best Death Ever
February 2020
There’s no more beautiful way to depart a body than enjoying ravioli and chocolate cake for your final meal before going to sleep and giving up the ghost in your living room. This is how my Nono Frank Pastori joined the ancestors, just weeks after celebrating 100 trips around the sun. The only opportunity for improvement is if this didn't take place on Maya’s 30th birthday.
My Nono stood nearly 6 feet tall, and his personality added at least another foot to his stature. His stories are legendary, and he told them often. Even a few hours before taking his last breath, he was still telling stories with perfect lucidity, laughing about the time he and a friend drove down Market Street in San Francisco, attempting to sell an array of jackrabbits they had shot and tied to the hood of the car - the obvious method for advertising their offering. He survived the great depression by hunting with a shotgun, his mother instructing him to not return home empty handed. He taught himself chemistry despite dropping out of school in the 8th grade. His dreams of becoming a major league baseball player were dashed by Constante, his Italian immigrant father, who insisted he swing a shovel in the soil instead of a baseball bat.
“Throwing a ball at your head, you’ll kill each other!” Constante would shout in protest at this strange game that my Nono loved so dearly.
He lived his 100 years almost entirely within a 10 mile radius of Geyserville, a small town in Northern California whose downtown is designated by a solitary stop sign. A honeymoon to Catalina Island and a hunting trip to Wyoming were his most elaborate adventures. By the time I was born, he was already referred to as one of the old-timers of grape growing and winemaking in Sonoma County. He continued practicing his craft well into his late nineties, almost all the way to his last waking moment. He lived ten decades despite frequently playing in DDT as a child and decades of further pesticide exposure as an adult. When you do what you love every day, even the most harmful substances on earth can’t kill you.
When my Noni Edie passed away, we all assumed that Nono wouldn’t be far behind her. They had been married for over 70 years. Nono didn’t know how to cook or clean, and he suddenly found himself living alone for the first time. Against all odds, he found the will to keep going for nearly a decade. He developed a formula that he practiced like a devotee of the most fanatical faith. Every morning he would wake up before sunrise and eat a bowl of Special K cereal with 2% milk as he poured over the morning paper. Then, he would saunter across the living room and sit across from the washing machine, squatting cautiously into a wooden chair, covered by a slim cushion that was perfectly contoured to his bottom from years of wear. He’d weasel his weathered feet into leather boots so layered in mud and dust that you could no longer discern their original color. He would cover his head with a baseball cap, gently open and shut the backdoor, still hearing the echo of his wife’s constant command to not let any flies in the house. He’d hold firmly to the handrail that my dad installed for him and thoughtfully navigate the 3 stairs that led into his driveway. He would swing open the door to his white Chevy truck, hoist himself up onto the drivers’ seat and turn the key in the ignition. He would disappear into his vineyard for hours and go about tending to a list of never ending tasks.
Nono managed to maintain this agricultural bachelor lifestyle for several years, until he gained a roommate and mentee 72 years his younger. After several frustrating years of attempting to live as an adult in my parents’ home, my brother Paolo decided to move in with Nono and learn how to carry on the family business. For the last few years of Nono’s life, Paolo absorbed almost a century’s worth of wisdom in growing grapes, making wine, tending to the land, and telling stories. Everyday, they cruised around the vineyard, moving through a dynamic curriculum, perfect for a kinesthetic learner. As Nono’s physical health deteriorated, Paolo also tended to the ever increasing tasks that needed to be done to keep him alive.
When the most stubbornly self-sufficient man I know gratefully accepted help, I knew the end was near. Despite all the vitamins and minerals in Special K, Nono’s body was finally shutting down. My mother hired live-in help to support him in getting through his days. His time riding around in his truck quickly receded, replaced by television watching and newspaper reading. Soon, he was connected to an oxygen tank 24/7 and spending almost every waking moment in a rented hospital bed in his living room.
When I went to visit him on Maya’s birthday, I had the feeling it would be the last time I would see him with his eyes open. I sat by his side, holding his right hand like a delicate treasure. Deep wrinkles covered every available surface of his fingers like dried up tributaries of an ancient river basin. Even with plastic tubes protruding from his nostrils, he delighted in telling the stories that are so etched into my being I could recite them word for word. I watched as he focused his limited remaining motor skills on delivering a lone ravioli to his mouth, followed by a forkful of chocolate birthday cake, which ended up coating his lips in an endearing layer of dark brown frosting.
When it was time to depart, I looked deeply into his eyes and told him “I love you” with sincerity that was forged in the fire of impermanence. I knew this would be the last time.
As we drove away I could see him through the living room window raising his hand, waving a final goodbye.
*
In the middle of the night, I was jolted from my sleep by a phone call from my mother, saying I needed to come to Geyserville immediately. Nono was in the process of dying.
Maya and I rolled out of bed and drove 75 minutes through windy country roads in our pajamas. When I opened the front door, I was met by my father, who had tears in his eyes for the second time I can ever recall. Nono had taken his last breath 20 minutes prior. I embraced my mother whose face was also covered in tears. I sat down at Nono’s side, beholding this 100 year old vessel which had served him so well. His eyes were closed and his mouth was slightly ajar. I held his hand once again. It was still warm. My own pulse reverberated into his palm, which gave me the sensation that if I focused hard enough I could coax life back into his body. Instead, I prayed for his spirit to have a smooth passage to wherever he was traveling next.
Without having any active cultural traditions to draw upon, we created our own. I had the impulse to bath Nono’s body in rosemary water, so I did. I ventured out into the frigid pre-dawn air to harvest several sprigs of rosemary and sprinkled them into a pot of hot water. Several minutes later, I submerged a hand towel in the pot, gently wrung out the water, and carefully washed Nono’s face and hands. My mother and brother joined me.
After several hours of sitting together in quiet reflection, our bubble was opened for all that death entails in the modern world. The doctor confirmed Nono was no longer living. The workers from the funeral home came to deliver his body to its next destination. It felt painfully unceremonial to turn the body over to these two men, whom Nono had never met. They seemed well versed in the emotional angst of a grieving family, and waited patiently outside until we had all said our third, fourth and fifth goodbyes.
A century’s worth of wisdom and stories traveled slowly up the driveway in a nondescript white van with 2 strangers. I finally understood the meaning of the word vacuum. I had never been in Nono’s home without him. I looked around the room and suddenly identified my mother as the matriarch of the family, the oldest surviving member. Reality drastically changed overnight. We were in uncharted territory, playing new roles, and vulnerable to all the rapid transformation that naturally occurs in a vacuum. Little did I know that I would soon be ushering new life into this foreign landscape.
~
For a musical exploration of death, click the image below to listen to ‘Immortal.’
“Living in a body is not for the faint of heart
There’s billions of problems, that can knock you off your mark
Reading books in volumes, does not make you smart
Rather how you are responding to the the light and the dark”