A Tribute to My Nanu

Today would have been my Nanu's 89th birthday. This past December my Nanu passed away, peacefully, after being sick with a variety of illnesses over the year. I miss him very much. This is a difficult blog post for me to do, but I truly believe in the power of photography to help the heart heal. So, in putting this together, I was fondly reminiscing, but I was also letting myself cry, both tears of joy and tears of pain...it's all part of the healing for me. I'll never forget my Nanu; he was a gentle, compassionate soul, with big, warm hands that I loved to hold. My pictures of him make it feel like he is still here, gently patting my hand, telling me how proud he was of me with his crooked smile....

These photos speak to my soul...

I dedicate this post and this slideshow to my Nanu.

These first 4 pictures are from a photography project I did back about 12 years ago in collage; it was a portrait study of special people in my life.





My nanu loved to take naps.



And he loved his birds.



He also enjoyed and took much pride on taking care of his lawn. He was quite the family man, my Nanu.




He was so handsome.......he aged so gracefully.



This was my grandparent's 50th wedding anniversary...renewing their vows. It would have been their 60th anniversary this year.









He really loved my Nana.... and kissed her all the time.






We surprised him for his 80th birthday with a party.









Loving father to my mom, Karen.







And to his son Keith.





Nanu got to see his family grow, with many great grandchildren that he adored.








That crooked smile...








Me and my nanu....





Nanu & Nana with their little doggy Buddy. Buddy, and later their dog Kiki, gave my Nanu great comfort.








His beloved Kiki was always on his lap.








These images Paul and I took while our family was visiting my Nanu in one of his many stays in the hospital. They were very difficult for us of take, but we are so happy to have them now......














My Nana with my Nanu. I will cherish these forever....they make me cry every time I see them.





My grandparents holding hands.





My Nana was a strong, strong woman. She spent every waking moment with my Nanu while he was in the hospital. And when he was home, she took care of him, day and night.














My mom with her daddy.











I'm so grateful to Paul for capturing some images of me and Nanu. He also took many of the other photos in the hospital.








My Nanu never lost his sharpness. Everytime I saw him he would ask my how Paul was doing. It makes me so sad that he won't there to see us get married. But I know in my heart that he'll be watching from heaven above.








I can still feel his warm, strong hands. They never became frail.





My lovely nieces Kali and Mikayla.





And their dad, my brother Joe.






































He was making us smile, even in our sadness.....and this is how I'll always remember him, as a funny, caring man.

One of my favorite quotes from Dr. Seuss goes like this: "Don't cry because it's over; smile because it happened."





I gave my Nana a special gift for Christmas....












Here's the eulogy that my sister Kalee wrote for his memorial service. There wasn't a dry eye when she read this; what great memories.....and beautiful written.

James B Riggio was a husband, a father, a brother, uncle, and friend… and he was Nanu. He had hands that could bend steel, warm hugs and a smile that made his forehead crinkle and his eyes go all squinty. To my mom and my uncle, he was their Pop… the hardworking, loving father that took a job driving school buses just so that he could see them each morning… the sweet dad who brought home a box of Capital Lunch hotdogs when he left work late at night and would sit around the table , spending a few precious minutes with them, eating chili dogs at midnight. To the United States of America, he was a number pulled in the draft, and later a disabled veteran who had lost much of his hearing in the war… To my nana Dorothy Riggio, he was a loving husband, father of her children, and the beautiful individual that she chose to spend her life with… and in these toughest past few years she sat with him through it all… lovingly fulfilling her promise to stick by him… till death do us part…

I had read a book a while back, titled “Tuesdays with Morrie” a great little book, a true story, about a dying old man and his ideas about the meaning of life… and making peace with death… When I read it it had meant a great deal to me… and taught me more than a few ideas about how to live, and die, gracefully…I’d mostly forgotten about it…and then the day that my Nanu passed , it randomly appeared on the kitchen table… Even though I later found out that my mom had been cleaning out a bag and had set it there, I still felt like it had meaning that it had appeared there… like Nanu was trying to tell me in some subtle way that he had made peace with dying… and that he had went on from this life as well as one can… There is a part in the book where that old man, who is slowly losing him life to Lou Geherig’s disease, says to his friend the very same thing that Lou Geherig had to say about his own illness… that not everyone is so lucky to go slowly… that beside the pain and suffering there is a blessing… time to make peace… time to forgive… time to understand… and time to say goodbye… And I do believe that this was what Nanu, James Riggio, felt about his own departure… And he is right… not everyone is so lucky…. Not everyone is so lucky to be blessed in both their life and their death… A Strong and loving mother and father… beautiful, faithful, and devoted wife… two wonderful kind hearted children… 10 spirited grandchildren…13 and counting great grandchildren…. A brother and sisters, nieces and nephews, in laws, and countless other relatives and friends… his TV and Recliner, and his little dog Kiki asleep on his lap… he was truly a lucky man…

I can still hear his gruff deep voice calling “ Riggio!“ to my Nana from the next room… When I was little he used to tell me that I was gonna be the first women in baseball.. Or failing that maybe the first woman president… And sometimes when he would hug me goodbye he would whisper to me in this silly childish voice “yo my fav-wit” and give me a big toothy squinty smile.. He always had a way of making each one of us feel special… Every year when I was a kid, we’d spend just about every day all summer long down at Nana and Nanu’s house swimming in their pool and eating spaghetti and those giant Kosher Hotdogs Nanu loved… All during dinner he would teach us Italian phrases for “pass the cheese“ and tell us to “Manja Manja“, Italian for “eat“.. Once or twice I think he might have taught us a more colorful phrase or two in Italian if an unlucky telemarketer happened to call while we were there. He would always grumble at us at some point during each visit about some toys we had left out in the yard or on the pool deck from our previous visit… and he’d grumble about us leaving the screen house door or pool deck gate open… he’d grumble about us running through the house with wet feet… and he’d grumble at Nana in some of the loudest “Talking” I’d heard, and he’d grumble grumble grumble about having to maintain the pool… but without fail, every night he would add the pool chemicals to make it nice for us to swim, and every day or so he would get into his white T-Shirt and swim trunks and vacuum and clean that pool to keep us coming back to visit… He sure knew the way to our little hearts…and as much as he’d grumble he was always ready with a smile for an arm wrestle match with one of us, to demonstrate how to bend a railroad spike or break an apple, to let us try on his glasses or play dress up, to play Othello or to teach us a new card game… Sometimes we’d get a little too loud and after protesting once or twice, he’d simply turn down his hearing aid and let us kids be kids… such wonderful and vivid memories of him from my childhood days are forever etched in my heart… Cruises and trips that he and Nana would go on, and come back with tales and little mementos for us all.. I think I still have a florescent Alcatraz hat and a Hawaiian lei around somewhere…

His daily walks… his 25 pound cat “Muffin” that didn’t like anyone else much, but would follow him around like the best trained dog you’d ever seen… His bird watching books and binoculars, his well tended birdfeeders and his squirrel antagonizers… Fortunately for them he and his big heart only fought back with no-kill traps and long car rides to a new squirrely home… His big ole desk in the living room, and his silver Honda car, his baby…. In my teenage years he actually let me borrow that Honda to take my driver’s test…. Happily I passed the test…. And then without fail I promptly crashed his car later on that day… Boy did I dread the drive down there to tell him that night… I think that was the only time he ever got really truly angry at me…. But he did forgive me and I believe that he did even later find the humor in it… there was a photo that Nana took of him seeing the accident damage for the first time on his bedroom dresser for the past 10 years… all the way up until the day he passed on… And then there was his beloved Yankees… When they won there were his “guys“… when they lost they were “the bums” … but they were still his guys.. His team… I’m not really sure how to conclude this summary of James Riggio’s life… because I don’t believe that his life has concluded… In “Tuesday’s with Morrie” it is said “Love is how you go on, after you’re gone” … and if that is as true as it seems to me, than Nanu, James, will never die… not as long as we all carry love for him in our hearts and memories… so I will conclude this with another bit from Morrie’s book… a little story to reflect on…

The story is about a little wave, bobbing along in the ocean, having a grand old time. He's enjoying the wind and the fresh air -- until he notices the other waves in front of him, crashing against the shore" 'My God, this is terrible,' the wave says. 'Look what's going to happen to me!' "Then along comes another wave. It sees the first wave, looking grim, and it says to him, 'Why do you look so sad?' "The first wave says, 'You don't understand! We're all going to crash! All of us waves are going to be nothing! Isn't it terrible?' "The second wave says, 'No, you don't understand. You're not a wave, you're part of the ocean.' "



Happy Birthday in Heaven, Nanu!!! I love you....