A tortured soul

Posted by Keiri on January 31st, 2005 filed in Uncategorized

My grandfather is Alfonso Lino. He was born April 7, 1918 at 934 Grand Street, Brooklyn, New York. I’m telling you this because he is sick right now and I can’t help but think about him. Consider this a prayer for a tortured soul.

What I know about him is a mixture of truth, lies, insanity, perspectives, and only a few facts I can verify online. So do what we do in my family.. take it with a grain of salt.

Some of these stories are too bizarre to be lies, though.

Alfonso was the 7th child of Santo Lino and Rosalie Amato. They were both born in Italy in a small part of Sicily known as Bivona. Santo’s immigration is all I know about at this point, he was the ripe old age of 12 when he took the Lombardia across the Atlantic Ocean to Ellis Island.

Santo eventually got a job at the Newton Lumber Yard on the docks.

According to my grandfather, Santo worked 6 1/2 days a week at the docks… and was a very bitter, angry man because of how hard he worked. His wife, Rosalie, was supposedly an orphan. She and her sister Crucificia were raised in a convent in Buffalo, New York, after they and other siblings came to the US — probably shortly before their parents died, but I am not sure. According to family lore, Rosalie was a wild one. The two had been married in 1905.

They had Elizabeth, Josephine, Francis, Rose, Joseph and Alfonso. And here is where the family lore kicks in. Supposedly.. since they were both illiterate, Santo and Rose put the mother’s name in the spot where the child’s name should be, and named all of their daughters Rose. Therefore, they adopted their OWN names and took popular names from the time. In fact, they then took nicknames – Lizzie, Josie, Fannie, and Sadie. Here’s the problem – they also nicknamed Alfonso (my grandpa) Frank. Supposedly, my grandpa didn’t know his name was Alfonso legally until he joined the army.

So.. he goes by either. When he was a young child, a dentist slit a nerve in his face. From then on, he had a swashbucking smile which was half-limp. He told me his dad nearly killed the dentist, literally.. and that I don’t doubt.

My grandfather is the only of his siblings still alive. Some of them only recently passed away. When I was being confirmed, my grandfather took me to church for the “trainings” – I suppose he was my sponsor. He told me of a time when his sister Lizzie was terribly ill and he prayed and prayed for her.. and finally, he felt it worked, and God heard his prayers. I had no idea what he meant until I spoke to Lizzie’s daughter, Mary, and found out what he meant. Lizzie had gotten ill at 10 years old, when there were no antibiotics readily available – and became deaf for 15 years. Finally, inexplicably, she got her hearing back. Even more strangely, she lost it again 15 years afterwards.

At 5 years old, he must not have really understood what was going on very well, but was very scared for his sister.

Santo Lino could be brutal. He would beat the children with very little mercy.. and my grandfather survived by running away. His older brother, Joseph, was not as quick, and took the brunt of the abuse. The daughters would be beaten, sometimes with rope, if they were late coming home. But even after this behavior, my grandfather described his father as a good man. He said his mother was happy go lucky, but his father had pride, and it made him angry at how his life was.

The reprieve came with the war, when he was drafted into the army – helping the medics. One time, and I never know how true anything he said was, and he certainly gave us reason to doubt… he told me that a man had died in his arms right as he was getting off a boat. He wrote poetry in the military and we found his scrapbook – full of poems – while he was living in Massapequa many years later. One was titled, “A Buddy Lost.” Even at a young age – I knew how tough this was for him, but he talked to me about all of it.

After the war, my grandfather met his future wife, Rose Arena. He had been involved with someone else, but it ended when he met Rose. She was truly an Italian beauty, and all of her early photos showed her looking glamorous – and both of them appeared in love even from the photos. She was born October 1, 1923 in New York, to a father who had immigrated in 1915 and a mother from a more established (and rumored wealthy) family. It’s hard to know what the appeal truly was, but both were well-dressed and attempting to better themselves – early photos of my grandfather have him always in a suit. Her, always dressed to the nines. She had loads of friends and penpals and had wanted to be a teacher, but her father didn’t allow it. She was an extremely social person, but hard on herself and hard on her family. Perhaps in more ways than one, she was like Frank’s father.

According to Mary again, my grandmother, Rose, did not get a lot of attention from her parents. She was extremely neat, serious, and set in her ways. She was more sophisticated than her parents, and this was hard for her, because she wanted them to be less.. well, probably less immigrant. It was hard for her to be affectionate. She was an enigma in herself, and probably took a hell of a lot of crap from Frank.. because…

My grandfather is bipolar. Certainly some of that is chemical, but from the abuse, I’m suprised he wasn’t a homicidal maniac. So, when he lost a job, he wore a robe for months and cried, wouldn’t leave the house. On his manic upswings, he would build things, make an ass of himself, embarrass his family, and stay up for days. He, in short, made life a living hell for those around him. He too bad a bad temper – and between Rose and Frank, their children had a very rough time of it. Finally, he got another job working for the telephone company where he came up with 3 patents for the company.

My mother, Patricia, and my aunt, Barbara, were born into a house of high expectations, low tolerance and patience, flaring tempers and unspoken rules. It was like walking through a minefield and both of them handled it in dangerous and self-destructive ways. Between their strict and unattached mother, and their freewheeling, untrustworthy father, they had nowhere to turn. Barbara eventually ran away. My mother eventually was thrown out.

They both achieved. My mother is a library media specialist raking in some dough, and my aunt is a psychotherapist. ALthough I would say my aunt’s failed marriages and my mother’s choosing a man with a bad temper were related to their upbringing, they both seem to have found some insight into it and have rectified for themselves – or at least learned to live with, the generations upon generations of abuse, ignorance and miseducation.

My grandfather was no saint. My grandmother was no demon. She became very ill in her lifetime, showing the symptoms both my mother and myself show – overweight, lethargy, etc.

She kept gaining weight and could do nothing about it. How much of it was stress is unknown. I do know my mother got a complex from it, well, from that and the other abuse – and ended up starving herself, taking diet pills, and doing crazy diets until her metabolism finally died. Then, she got the same illness her mother did, and gained the weight she had tried so hard to keep off anyway. This is something she has a very difficult time grappling with.

My mom and dad tried very hard to raise us differently from what they had known. For the most part, they succeeded, but I think every generation only improves somewhat on what they had known. Because some of it you have no control over – if you have mental illness that brings on depression or anger, you can’t help it. So in our family we had problems too – but I’d like to happily tell you today they are dealt with and treated in an ongoing manner, and we are very close.

My grandmother died in 1984. Unable to bear to live in the house in Queens Village where they lived anymore.. my grandfather moved to Massapequa – closer to us. He lived there as a bachelor for many years. I do suspect he dated but he was still battling the mental illness on a daily basis. I would visit him as a child and he’d take me through the wood preserve next door to his house, or out to eat, or to the lake to feed the ducks. We got along great and I loved spending time with him. I wanted to know about his life and loved his book collection. He told me once he always had a book with him – he always wanted to be reading and improving himself. Frank loved his children, and was crazy about his grandkids.

We had a good time for a while. Then my grandfather found out something about his brother which broke him. It was something that echoed inside himself – his brother had done some terrible things that led to his own son killing himself. At the funeral, one of my grandfather’s nieces told him the truth, and my grandfather simply broke. Why? Partially he blamed himself – he wished he had known and stopped it. Partially, I suppose, he thought he was so close to having done the same actions as his own brother, and he couldn’t bear to think of it.

He had the worst mental breakdown of his entire life.

He stayed on my mother’s couch all through that christmas. He was stark, raving mad. He made no sense. Eventually, he had to be put on lithium and regulated. He couldn’t live alone anymore. We had to sell the house in Massapequa and get him into assisted living.

We did, and eventually the medication and care made a difference. The tortured soul that he was found a brief respite of peace. He started to get help. He was doing better. He was upset that they had to sell the house but in a way he understood – beside all of his Italian macho gusto.

He dated, was known as the best dancer in the place, and brought a few lovely ladies to christmas dinner now and then. He truly had a life going for himself – then one day… he was out bowling and felt the need to cross Jericho Turnpike (a major road) in order to get a cup of soda from a fast food place. He was hit by a car. It was hit and run, and he was in a coma.

For weeks, we went to the hospital and thought he wouldn’t make it. He was in his 70s – but we should have known he was a fighter. Just look at all the wars: mental illness, family, world war II, no college education but supporting a family… anyway, the hospital screwed up his medication and nearly killed him. Immediately, he went bipolar again. The medication was all off and it took months for him to recover from it. But recover he did, his first words back were him asking for a cup of iced coffee… guess he still was thirsty (he never did get his soda.)

My parents moved him to other places as his needs increased, and now he’s in the Gerwin Jewish Center. He’s a kick. In his 60s he decided he was going to play both fields and started wearing a Star of David and a cross. Now when we go to visit him, he’s wearing a yarmulke. He has a very great sense of humor about it and teases the rabbis when they come to talk to him.

My mother and her father have a very strained relationship. Some of his mental delusions centered around her. He says innapropriate things. He is your typical dirty old man. I wish he wasn’t but there it is. His mental illness manifests with him saying gross, innappropriate things – as far as I know the worst he’s ever done is grab at a woman, like his nurses, but he has very poor impulse control as he gets older.

Mom says she thinks he does a lot of what he does on purpose – the bad behavior, the foul things he says, the grabbing – and worst of all, she thinks he just wants to be taken care of and not be a man, that he took advantage of her caring for him ever since her mother died. Basically, she thinks she was used by someone who knew exactly what he was doing.

I’m not so sure. He’s never been innappropriate with me but his delusions were not about me. When he acted like a jackass, I’d tell him, and he’d grin and stop. We still got along as good as we did when I was young and I’d visit him – finally, the grandfather I had lost to years of mental illness, coma and depression.. had come back. He got along great with my husband. When I failed the bar the first time, he said.. I failed the civil service exam four times, and that wasn’t even that hard! You can do it. You’re my granddaughter and you are smart.

I passed the next time. Guess he was right.

I can’t explain how I feel. I’m crying right now. He’s a bad man, a good man, a fighter, a sleaze, a liar, a storyteller, a jackass, a tough survivor. An abusive father, but also a man who loved his wife, and loves his kids and grandkids – and now great grandkid – passionately and with joy. A man who learned he was wrong, and saw how life could have been, and could not bear it.

I’m not sure how anyone reading this will evaluate him.

But I love the old guy.

And for as much as it’s worth, I forgive him his faults, his sins, his mistakes. But I’m not the ones most hurt by him.. and I hope if there is a God, he forgives him too, and knows that deep down he’s a good man, with a good soul.

I think Amanda, my niece, is the glowing, crowning jewel of a lifetime for him.

If you pray, please pray for him. I don’t know if he wants to get better, but whatever he chooses now, I love him. That’s all I can say.