I remember Rosalie

Rosalie Sciortino and I became close friends and enjoyed a nurturing friendship for decades.

Until I met Rosalie, I thought people her age didn’t know how to have fun and dwelt too much on their aches and pains, seemingly taking inventory of their body parts. Someone told me that was what I could expect when I got old. Since then, old people were a reminder of my fate. Rosalie taught me how to enjoy life with enthusiasm and be strong when facing health challenges.

I first met Rosalie in 1993 at a senior creative writing group at Apollo Park in Downey. At age 40, I was the youngest in the group and Rosalie may have been a little older than her contemporaries there. As I heard and watched her read her stories, I was not only entertained but inspired. Her creativity was not stagnant with melancholy. She put a smile on everyone’s face, including her own, as she looked around the room like a child with a story to tell. I knew then I wanted to get to know her better. 

She invited me to her Writer’s West Workshop group where she was president, then secretary. Rosalie married later in life and had no children. After her husband Nick died, I invited her to my memoir writing group in Norwalk. She eventually joined and we got to know each other better through stories we shared. 

Rosalie was younger at heart than I. I had to grow up fast having been married and a mother while in my teen years and the Vietnam War was a personal concern to our family. Vic, my teenage husband and father of our child, was a U.S. Marine deployed in Cambodia, in harm’s way. 

After Vic’s time in the military ended in June of 1966, he went to work at Owen Glass factory, where he worked double shifts for four decades. With now two daughters grown and Rosalie living alone, we began to have a gal’s day out once or twice a week. We went to breakfast, lunches, movies, tea parlors, plays, shopping or just visited in the backyard, where we laughed, sipped, chatted and chewed. 

I recently came across a letter I sent to Rosalie: 

“Dear Rosalie, I aspire to be like you. You were so charming to the intern at the E.R. when you sprained your wrist. You asked if he was Palermo, Sicily and he said, “Yes!”

You invited him to write about his love for the “old country” and to come to our Writers Workshop West. He must have been impressed by you also. No one was more surprised than me when he showed up!

I will never forget the incident at Olive Garden. You asked to personally compliment the chef on the eggplant dish you enjoyed so much. He came to our table to meet you. When we went to pay the bill the cashier told us it was already taken care of with the chef's compliments!”

I remember when she told me how she made contact in cyberspace with an old flame she was once engaged to who (safely) lived hundreds of miles away. I laughed till my stomach ached. Rosalie seemed to relish my reaction.

How hysterical was the time we went to the theater to see the musical “Chicago.” I found her sense of fun and child-like abandonment influencing me because I was not even remotely embarrassed when we were told to hus by audience members after we began to sing along with Catherine Zeta Jones, Renee Zellweger and Queen Latifah to songs. If that were not bad enough, we got the giggles and had to leave the theater before the lights came on. We continued laughing all the way home. Who knew, so much fun could be so exhausting? I slept very well.

Of course, there were also times we cried together and comforted each other. Rosalie came to my beloved Uncle Brown’s funeral in 1983, my father’s in 1991 and my mother’s in 2012. In the days, weeks and months to follow she helped me through the grieving process, of which she said she was all too familiar with. 

I hope I played it forward on that ominous morning two years ago when I came over to have coffee with Rosalie. The gate to the backyard was open. I could see the little table set out in front of the garage. It had a lace tablecloth and a small vase with two pink roses from her garden. 

Rosalie came out and told me she had been calling my house wondering if I was late and that she had been sitting at the table waiting for me and motioning passing cars to drive in, each time thinking it was me. She laughed (though a little annoyed, I could tell). Then I laughed harder when she mused, “Luckily they all ignored me, or we would have some strange people sitting at our table.” 

She went up the back stairs and said “I’ll get the coffee.” As I watched her I thought she tripped on the carpet. She had a hand on the washing machine holding her up. I ran to help her but it was too late. She fell to the floor, her eyes wide open as was her mouth. 

I remember thinking this couldn’t be really happening. Time seemed to go by at warp speed and subsequently slow motion. I gave her CPR, knowing she was already gone. I picked up the phone, called paramedics and Carol and Frank Kearns who live nearby, along with Matthew, also a close friend, and my husband Vic. When everyone arrived, the nightmare felt real. It was a horrendous experience. I felt almost numb. 

In time, I came to view it as a blessing. If I had not been there I forever would have wondered how long she lay on the floor, perhaps crying for help. Knowing she did not suffer and died instantly brought me peace. 

When I came home I found a message from Rosalie on my answer machine asking me if I had left my house yet and that she had been waiting for me. 

Thank you, Rosalie.