Angelo

Yesterday afternoon I found out my neighbour in Greenpoint, NY had died from complications due to Covid-19.  His name was Angelo, he was 82 years old.  He had moved into the apt above us about 5 years ago, just after Dotti was born.  We would hear him in the early new born baby mornings vacuuming his apt, trying to keep his emphysema at bay.   Our apt building is owned by Maria, a strong willed thimble sized Puerto Rican lady who bought the house decades ago and raised her daughter, Beverly, there. 60 odd years later they both still live there.  They all look after each other, keep an eye out for one another and are deeply intrenched in the dwindling local community. Angelo use to spend his days in this neighborhood, either watching the world go by outside the buildings front door or chatting to the owners of the local stores.  When I spoke to Beverly yesterday she mentioned that Angelo had been talking about how hard life was getting.  On a recent trip to one of the stores he had told the owner that he just wanted to be with his mother, who had died many years ago. The details grow a little blurry here, but at some point shortly afterwards he vanished, he was found, he was hospitalized, he escaped ( yes he just got up and walked out), raced around Manhattan for a while before falling over.   Needing physio therapy they transferred him to a nursing home where by all accounts he was mending well. He wanted to come home though, the place depressed him. Then the pandemic took hold of the world and the nursing homes shut down. Beverly tried to get him out of there, he no longer needed to be there, but they wouldn’t let him go. It wasn’t long before Covid came knocking.   The last time anyone spoke to him on the phone he made no sense. A week later he died, alone.  

A few years ago my husband did some work for Angelo. He worked on his kitchen, free of charge. As a thank you he made us one of his infamous Cheese Cakes.  They were apparently the stuff of legends. At the local church fairs, his cakes were always the first to go, the first to sell out.  The cake was indeed meltingly delicious, one of those i’ll just have one bite and then before you know it you are walking back to the fridge to take another and another.   I wish, though, I had asked him in to join us, told him to pull up a chair, put the kettle on and have a cuppa with us while we ate.  I’m sure he had many stories, i’m sure he would have liked the company.  I can’t do anything to change that now but I am hoping his mom did just that yesterday afternoon when he finally got to join her again. RIP Angelo.