Rocco DiSpirito
| Uncle Joe and Family | ||
 |
 |
|
| Photo: Bill Bettencourt | ||
"Just like in the movie Ghost," she explained. I thought to myself, this isn't a good sign.
But as I thought more about him, his life and his grand spirit, I decided that she must be right.
Joe was my mother's younger brother -- the eldest of four boys and definitely the patriarch of our family here in America. He followed my mom to the U.S. from Italy in the early 1960s, and worked hard to craft his own American dream: job, marriage, kids and a house in the suburbs. He was a big man with a strong constitution, and he worked as a butcher in a meat-processing plant for more than 20 years. When I first found out he had fallen ill, I knew he would beat it -- he had always seemed invincible. By all appearances, Joe was an ordinary American who went to work every day and came home to his family. Where he was different was in how he lived: In Italy, life isn't just something you get through till something better comes along. So Joe recreated his Italian lifestyle here, in a small town on Long Island. In Naples especially, where Joe was from, life is a series of moments to be savored and marked by laughter, great food, wine and the people you love around you. Luckily, Joe had many people whom he loved and who loved him in return. With my grandmother's help, he built a parallel universe where he lived life as he had in the old country, and maybe even better -- a version of what Italian life would have been like had there not been so much war and poverty there. Joe's home here was an attractive and welcoming place to entertain, and I immensely enjoyed every minute I spent there. His house was like a sunny hillside Tuscan villa, complete with a basement cantina full of handcrafted wine, aging provolone cheese hanging from the rafters, and a garage brimming with homemade soppressata (an aged, soft salami) and coppa (a traditional Italian pork sausage). A picturesque trellis of white grapes offered shade on hot summer days, and lush gardens out back, room to wander. But all of this, every bite of fresh basil and garden-grown tomato sauce, would have been worthless without people to enjoy them with. As I see it, the true Good Life is not about the things. The good life is about enjoying the company of those around you, and a belief that anything is possible when you have others to help.
RSS
