A week ago we lost my grandfather, Robert Lodovichetti. He had been in and out of the hospital for weeks with pneumonia and congestive heart failure, and all of the complications that come along for the ride. On April 15, 2020 he passed. A week later, I’m still having difficulty processing his passing. It’s not from a lack of experience, the past few years have been filled with people passing. My grandmother (his first wife), then Oma (my paternal grandmother), my godfather, and my wife’s grandfather earlier this year. 

While those losses were sad, there was a way forward, a way through. We knew how to grieve, it’s something learned through repetition and culture. Time to reflect alone followed by a memorial service and/or funeral, followed by a gathering to share stories and talk about the deceased and reconnect with family. 

But living in New York and New Jersey during the coronavirus pandemic, I don’t know when or if any of those things are going to happen. I can’t hold my parents and try to provide comfort. I can’t see family and reminisce. I can’t share memories with my cousins. As the oldest cousin I have memories they don’t that I’d love to share. That’s the hardest part of grieving in the age of quarantine, not being able to share those stories. Memories live in those stories, they come up fresh and new to help us heal. So let me tell you a little about my grandfather, memories of his stories and of him. This is going to be a little on the rambling side and absolutely out of order, so I’m going to apologize in advance.

There was a time when my parents and I lived in the basement of my grandparents house in the suburb of Dix Hills on Long Island. By the time I was a child my grandfather was working the press for the sports section of the NY Daily News. Despite the commute he would get up with me every Saturday morning to watch He-Man in the living stereotype that was my grandparent’s 80’s Long Island Italian American living room (white leather sectional, glass coffee table, and big TV in a white lacquered cabinet). And, most amazingly, he would actually watch the show with me, not sit and have coffee and read the paper, but really watch cartoons on an early Saturday morning.

Like most Italian American families Sunday dinner was a thing. From my grandfather I learned how to set a table correctly (from his time in the restaurant) and how to make gnocchi. He showed me the right way to do things.

Music was one of the things that we bonded over more than any other. He loved Frank Sinatra and Louis Prima (as an Italian American man of a certain age that’s not surprising), but hands down my favorite musical discussions with him were about jazz. My grandfather grew up in Corona, Queens. The very same, small neighborhood Louis Armstrong moved to. Louis would practice on his roof and my grandfather would sit out on his roof and listen. Later in life he’d make sure to never miss BB King at the Blue Note or Les Paul at the Iridium Room. We always had plans to go together, but never did. I was in college and always too busy. It’s one of the few regrets I have with him.

Before my grandfather moved down to Florida he came and stayed with my parents and I for the summer. I may have been the only kid to be excited that his grandfather was going to be staying with him, but I was over the moon. We spent nearly every day together. We’d go golfing, have lunch, or just cruise in his Toronado. We talked about everything. Girls. Parents. Golf. School. He even let me drive his car a few times. Sitting behind the wheel of that boat and just talking.

He loved his family, his children, his grandchildren and his great grandchildren and their families. I am so happy that Lena got a chance to meet him, to know him, to spend an hour on the phone with him a week before he passed telling him all of the complicated gossip that was bubbling in her 3rd grade class.

A few months before he passed away we had our last real conversation (Lena was busy playing so I actually got him to myself). We were out visiting friends in Queens and I called him as I wandered around Flushing Meadows Corona Park, his old stomping grounds. He told me about playing football in the field that I was walking across. About walking to the park after school to meet up with friends. All this while I described the park around me. How the Terrace had taken up all of the parking and the great stone steps that used to lead into the park were being pulled out.

We all have different memories of those who we’ve lost. Some good, some bad, and some that just are. Funerals and memorials are the times we’re supposed to tell these stories. We’re supposed to celebrate their lives and the innumerable ways their lives touched us. Since I can’t tell these stories there right now I needed to share them here. Thanks for listening and letting me share a little about my grandfather. He really was a hell of a man.

And please, take the time to get these stories out if you have them. If you have a memory of my grandfather you’d like to share let me know - I’d love to share it here.