End of and Era

A death of a relative is hard on people and it is rough on the family with the grief and the setting

up of the arrangements. I have never really experienced that feeling more than once but that

was until the week leading up to my birthday when my grandfather had died. It was two weeks

before my birthday and my grandfather Angelo Stelluto was in the hospital for the second time

in four months and it was rough on my family because there was something about this stay that

just didn’t feel right. He was having many problems, one day it would look like he could get

better but the next day or even later in the day he would take a bad turn. As a week had passed

it was a few days before my birthday and my grandfather was intibated; which meant that he had a

breathing/ feeding tube put down his throat. When that occurred we knew that his condition was

getting really bad especially when the doctors said they were trying to get him a room in hospice care,

which meant that he was basically at the end of his life and we all knew it was time. The day was

February 2, 2009, I was at my Boy Scout meeting when I was surprised by my mom and sister with a

cake, I was shocked that they did that; my mom said that it was all they could do because of the rough

time that was presented. It was one of the worst birthday because of the circumstances and what would

occur on that Wednesday. I am half asleep around six-thirty because I had just got the news that school

was cancelled due to the snow storm that had happened that day, when all of a sudden I heard my mom

crying and that’s when I knew that my grandfather had died. So, I get up and go to my parents’ room to

talk and officially hear the news. My dad had received a phone-call from my uncle who was at the

hospital and had to wake my mom to tell her the news. I walk in to my parent’s room and get told the

news and I just stood the silently for a bit then I sat on the bed. After I sat down and thought for a

moment I had started to cry because I realized that I had lost someone in whom I was really close, I just

keep crying and it was hard because I had spent so much time with him and have done so much for him

that it was a tremendous loss. Then we decide to that we should get ready and head over to my

grandmother’s house. When we get there it was a really bad scene one I never thought I would see; my

grandmother was crying hysterically while being surrounded by some people. Throughout the whole day

people come by bringing food and other items for my grandmother. We spent almost the whole day at

the house eating what was brought and drank what we had around. We tried to make sure that my

grandmother could get as comfortable as possible, and then we had to start doing the inevitable, getting

the funeral together. After all the discussions I was assigned to be a pall bearer and I felt that it was a

neither honor because of how close I was to my grandfather. Something that my grandfather was

famous for was planning a head and doing things by the book which had helped us during the arranging

of the funeral. In 1983, my grandfather and picked out , test drove and bought a coffin so he was

comfortable, he picked out where his grave was going to be, also he picked the place where the

luncheon was going to be after the funeral, and he picked out the suit he was going to wear when he

was buried. He had did all of that because in late 1982 he had a triple bypass surgery and it had scared

him to death so he set everything up just in case. The funeral was set up for Saturday the seventh at ten

am with the viewing from eight to 10 at Our Lady of Ransom Church on Roosevelt Boulevard in

northeast Philadelphia. The day has come and we are starting to arrive at the church and now we are in

the receive line at the church and I see the large amount of people that are there and I am happy

because of all the people that came to show their support for the family. I start talking to people about

him and it gets harder and harder to talk I just break down all over again and I start crying because I just

miss so much. I was trying to keep myself together the rest of the and eventually do when we get to the

cemetery which we got there by police escort at St. Dominic’s church and back at the luncheon because

that is what he would have wanted. This experience was a really bad one for me but it showed me that

family is important to me and that you need family by you even in tough times. What made this whole

thing even worse was that my grandfather died on his and my grandmother’s wedding anniversary of

sixty-six years.