The Final Goodbye

(Digital Editor's Note: This article appeared first in the June 2023  edition of the print version of The Stand.)

My dad passed away in January, 25 years after my mom. It’s a strange feeling to realize that the parents you relied on for so long are no longer there for you.

When your parents are Christians, as mine were, the sting of death is surely lessened. But I find myself wistfully looking both forward and backward: forward to the day when I will see them again, backward to the legacy they left behind.

I remember well what Dad taught me.

Hard work

My dad would never accept anything but my best effort and quickly rejected excuses. For one thing, growing up in Nashua, New Hampshire, meant we were New Englanders who prized themselves on being independent and hard working. Slackers were abhorred, and the Vitagliano house was no different.

I was disappointed when Mom and Dad told me that they were sending me to an all-boys Catholic high school. I didn’t want to go. None of my friends would be attending. Also, did I mention there were no girls there?

On the first Saturday after my first week of school, I wanted to go play basketball with my friends. Dad asked me if I’d finished my homework. I lied and said yes.

Then he did something that changed my life. He said, “Bring your school books down here.” I went upstairs to my bedroom in a panic. I hadn’t even cracked them.

He held each book open and asked me questions from the chapter I had supposedly already read. Of course, I failed miserably.

Dad cracked the whip. He set down strict rules for hard and diligent work that I resented for a long time – until those rules began to pay off. To this day, I would rather read a book and dig deeply into a subject of interest than almost anything else.

Respect for authority

There were life-or-death moments when my two sisters or I defied Dad, which rarely happened. But there was the time Mom called me down to the living room, where she was sitting with Dad, and told me I had to start doing a better job keeping my room clean.

“I’ve been too busy,” I said, complaining about my high school schedule.

Dad interrupted and said, “Everyone is busy. I’m busy too.”

To this, I stupidly replied: “Yeah, well, I don’t have a wife to pick up after me.”

It’s the kind of sarcastic comment I normally would have reserved for my sisters or my friends, but I’d said it to my father. The Marine. Dad bolted out of his chair and was in my face in a flash. To this day, I respect authority all the way from the local police to the Almighty.

Love, laughter, family

We had wonderful Christmases. Good food. New clothes when school rolled around. He provided for his family.

He bought a nice home where we spent a decade of our lives. Our backyard was filled with trees and sloped down so steeply that you could barely put a picnic table there. That wouldn’t do. Our family was all about entertaining the wider family – grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins.

He cut down the trees and brought in a million truckloads of dirt. I helped him build a small basketball court. He had a swimming pool put in. There wasn’t much we lacked in our lives growing up.

There was especially an abundance of laughter. I honestly remember so much laughter, and it’s evident whenever my sisters and I get together with our own families. We laugh together because we learned how from our parents.

Closeness of family was a core reality when I grew up. My mom and dad, my amazing sisters, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins – love for those people filled my life with a goodness that seems increasingly rare nowadays. I still smile when I think of those days together.

Growing up, supper at the dinner table with my family included some of the best times of my life. And Dad was at the head of that table, the pater familias, leading his little tribe through the wilderness.

It was and always will be a journey worth remembering.