Submitted
Nancy Nocek and her husband, Paul Cioe, welcomed Nancy's mother, Stella Nocek (seated), into their Rock Island home.
A few months ago my wife Nancy and I welcomed a new arrival into our home. The newcomer is not an infant but Nancy's 91-year-old mother, Stella. When we share this news with friends, reactions range from stunned silence to calls for our canonization. More often than not we get something between the two extremes: a sympathetic smile that says, "I wish we could do that, but ..." or words of encouragement that tell us we're doing the right thing.
Stella's story is a familiar one in American families today. Until late last December, when she fell down some steps in the Chicago home she and her late husband Mike bought in the 1970s, she was happily independent. But four months in a nursing home with a titanium "halo" clamped to her head changed everything. Suddenly she was unsure of her options, and the future became a cloudy time to be lived day by day.
I encouraged Nancy to consider the unthinkable: sever Stella's 90 years of Chicago ties and move her in with us, three hours away from familiar surroundings. If she wasn't going to spend her final years depending upon the kindness of strangers, this was the only logical thing to do. We're both retired but still blessed with our share of youthful energy — or the illusion of it — and with a few modifications our modest home could be adapted to fit the special needs of our new arrival.
When we started talking seriously about the move, I was thinking about Italy and what I had seen of family life on a visit there 10 years ago. My father emigrated to America as a teenager and never saw his parents again. A dozen years after his death, Nancy and I spent several days in the company of his two remaining siblings and their families. In Rome we felt at home in the apartment my father's "baby" sister, then 82, shared with her daughter and grandson. A few days later we spent time with three generations of my father's Italian family in the hometown 70 miles away. My uncle and his wife and their children and families lived in three apartments in the same building but ate the evening meal together and shared the highlights of their day. I can't describe the emotions I experienced as I listened to an eyewitness account from my dad's younger brother, then almost 90 himself, of the day more than 80 years earlier when my father sneaked aboard a freighter at Rome and began his impulsive journey to America.
As Uncle Vittorio told the story, we sat around the dinner table and listened with his children and grandchildren. Although they had no doubt heard the tale before, this time was different, as the new, expanded family to which we now belonged listened together.
"What do you want to do, Mom?" Nancy asked Stella as the end of her time in rehab drew near. She knew she couldn't live alone again in her two-story house, with bedrooms and bathrooms on the second floor.
"I want to live in a family home," Stella answered.
Family. Nancy and I have plenty of nephews and nieces with whom we're very close, but we never had children of our own. We've been a couple — a very close couple — for almost 40 years. Sharing our space with others around the clock is something we haven't done since we were young and still pampered like "precious cargo," as Stella likes to say, by our parents.
Now we're a family. We eat our meals together, Stella has her appetite back, and she praises my cooking even when it doesn't deserve it.
And as I see the care a daughter gives her mother, I learn new lessons about love.
Paul Cioe is a freelance writer and musician. He lives in Rock Island.
