Mystical Journey

By Drew Bacigalupa

A Memoir of the bond between a brother and sister, he being honored with awards in Italy, she in the final days of her life in the US. The compassionate journal of an artist/writer who, despite professional advances abroad, is haunted by a sibling who encouraged his work over long years,is now on her death bed. "Bring back wonderful stories," she'd told him. This is how she shared the journey.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Drew Bacigalupa
• Release date: Sep 18, 2010
• ISBN: 9781452404073

Drew Bacigalupa

Artist/Writer, Santa Fe, New Mexico. Graduate Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore; post-graduate work L'Accademia di Belli Arti, Florence, Italy. Married, 5 children. Extensive travels, work and study abroad, paintings and sculpture private collections, public installations USA and Italy. Published works include novels, children's books, collections of essays and short stories, newspaper columns and features.

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*****

"Drew Bacigalupa seems to be a Renaissance man with an intense love for human beings. A first-rate essayist, his comments on men and women and incidents in his life appeal because of his breadth of understanding, his philosophic vision and the vividness of his writing style."

—S. J. Miragliotta, NC News Librarian, Catholic Standard

*****

MYSTICAL JOURNEY

by

Drew Bacigalupa

SMASHWORDS EDITION

*****

PUBLISHED BY

The Studio of Gian Andrea at Smashwords

Mystical Journey

Copyright @ 2010 by Drew Bacigalupa

Cover design by the author

A Memoir, Mystical Journey began with an invitation in 2002 from the Mayor of Sorrento, (Campania) to participate in an exhibit of works by Santa Fe artists; and, coincidentally, notice from the LericiPea Foundation (Liguria) for Bacigalupa to attend its Poetry Awards ceremonies where he was to be honored with the premio Un Ligure nel Mundo.

The author seriously considered forfeiting the trip because of a series of grave illnesses and surgeries suffered by a sister living in Baltimore. In a phone conversation between hospital stays she urged him to not abort the plan to travel abroad. Go, and bring me back wonderful stories.

This is the story of that time in Italy, and of how the author’s sister shared it.

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away. Thank you for respecting Smashwords Editions and the work of the author.

*****

Voglio vivere cosi,

col sole in fronte,

e felice canto,

canto per me!

Tu non m’inganni, sole d’or!

M’accarezzi, dai calor;

sei buono, tu!

Tu che respire il mio respir,

ogni pena sai lenir,

campagna, tu!

—Voglio vivere cosi

Giovanni D’Anzi

*****

PROLOGUE

"You must go, my sister insisted, countering the consideration that I cancel the trip. It’s been planned a long time, you’re being honored with an exhibition and an award. People over there are expecting you."

Yes, but I heard the pain in her voice as she shifted, twenty-two hundred miles away, the phone position. She’d recently been hospitalized—pain and swelling of the arm, extreme fatigue and weakness—but was now back in her home where she lived alone. The medical diagnosis for her condition had been explained as a reaction to medication for a heart condition, medication which in the past had frequently needed adjustment or change. Marie tried to assure me that she was doing fine, therapists were coming to her house each day, and she was certain—though they’re saying it may take as long as two months—she needed only patience while waiting for full recovery.

Full recovery in her case meant return to the independent but limited way of life sustained for 16 years during which she’d suffered three strokes and open-heart surgery. A month shy of her 81st birthday, she was philosophical about aging and physical onslaughts, illnesses and recoveries, the inevitability of final passage. I continue to count my blessings every day, she said. Who would have thought that after that first stroke, the paralysis and speech impediment, I’d ever have survived even that. Then two more, and heart surgery. I’m not in a nursing home, I drive my car for shopping and to get to church. God’s been good to me.

Her strong faith had long shamed my own lax observance of doctrine and behavior instilled in us as children at home and in Catholic schools. No apologist for the errors and transgressions of its members, not in denial of institutional historical evils or of current, hideous scandals of pederasty and cover-ups by the hierarchy, she embraced her Church as the only avenue toward full communion with the Christ she loved and revered. I wasn’t surprised at her next words.

A young priest gave me the Last Rites while I was in the hospital. I didn’t need it, but was pleased to receive the sacrament. I’m fine. Go to Italy, enjoy yourself, take advantage of all the good things coming your way. Wish I could go with you.

She had been with me in that country I’ve long loved 16 years ago after her first bout with protracted illness. Then, too, I’d considered cancellation—which Marie’s doctors endorsed— because of her frail condition following the first stroke. She insisted we go. Never having traveled abroad until late in life, eager to attend a papal audience for which I’d obtained tickets in advance, knowing my familiarity with the country would ease getting around, she refused to remain behind. Our journey began with much apprehension on my part. Marie was ghastly pale, walked airports and train platforms with much difficulty, breathing heavily. Though ingrained resilience of our Depression-era, World War II generation negated fear or complaint and we shared many laughs, I nevertheless frequently wondered if we hadn’t seriously blundered and if I’d have to face a medical crisis in a country where I had little experience with hospitals.

Concern induced me to contact the American Bishops in Rome regarding the tickets for the general papal audience. I’d attended enough audiences in the past to know that long hours under the sun (or rain!) in St Peter’s Square could reduce pilgrims, hardy as well as frail, to fainting or more serious seizures. I also knew that a first-aid station, a medical vehicle staffed by a doctor, was at hand in the piazza during audiences, and asked if our general tickets could be changed to ones closer to that station. The Bishops Office graciously reserved seating for us in a section for the handicapped and sick.

Always an early arrival at audiences, I was pleased that Marie and I obtained chairs in the first row of the special section, very near the platform and chair from which His Holiness John Paul II would address the crowd. Marie was ecstatic. But as the section filled, new arrivals were not seated behind us but in front, our own row of chairs moved progressively toward the rear. Until our row was eventually the last. The first shall be last was my characteristic reaction.

I looked frequently at my sister’s face during the hours of waiting for the Pope’s appearance and throughout the audience. Drawn, drained of color, she was no longer the buoyant retiree from a successful business career I’d visited a year earlier. Unmarried, childless, I’d sometimes envied her the freedom from domestic stress which occasionally torments most of us—thought her countenance free of those scars earned in marriage and parenthood. But now the visage, if wreathed with a smile in the presence of her Pope, was etched by pain and suffering.

At the end of the audience, after his final blessing to the assemblage, John Paul II rose and walked toward the section reserved for the sick. He approached the first row, began to greet and bless individually the sick and the lame, some so severely damaged that my instinct was to look away. I watched him embrace, hold to his chest children and adults, all accompanied by caretakers, stricken souls who seemed unaware of where they were—whom our secular world would label madmen, lunatics, blathering and slobbering idiots. Whom we hide away, refuse to gaze on. John Paul II cradled them.

He’s going to come to each of us, bless us all, Marie said.

No way, I answered. The first few rows, maybe. But then he’ll stop, never get back here where we are.

He’s going to bless us all, Marie insisted.

I watched the white-robed figure move resolutely through the ranks, touched by his compassion for maimed brothers and sisters in Christ. And felt I shouldn’t be in their midst, hale and fit, a fraud among those meriting presence. I confided this to Marie. But you have to be here, or I couldn’t be, she said. It had been explained at the American Bishops Office that anyone admitted to the section for the sick had to be accompanied by a caretaker.

The Pope was in the row ahead of us, near enough to reach out and touch. I told you he’d bless us all, Marie said. And then he was before us. I took his hand, realized I was foolishly speaking imperfect Italian, rather than English, to acknowledge his blessing.

He moved to Marie, who sat very still, her eyes locked to his. John Paul II placed both his hands atop her head, whispered a prayer.

The sustained moment seemed an eternity. Marie to me looked bathed in radiant light. She was to swear ever after that the encounter with her Pope, no matter the second stroke and surgery which came in later times, was what gave her victory over affliction and granted auxiliary years of pleasure in life.

Now, more than a decade and a half after that audience, she spoke across the miles with loving fervor. I noted her speech was a bit more slurred than it had been before this most recent of hospital emergencies, but her words were emphatically positive.

Go to Italy. You’ve worked too hard for too many years not to accept the honors awaiting you there. Go, and bring me back wonderful stories.

A mere twenty-two months younger than she, I reminded her that concern for her health was not the only thing giving me pause—I had doubts about my own energies and stamina for traveling alone. Healthy and strong well into my seventies, a compulsive and prodigious worker, I was impatient with minor aches and pains which had surfaced in the past few years, detested the advance of slowing down, fought surrender of physical activities. The latest blow to pride was acquisition of a cane to fend off pain when walking, an exercise at which I’d once excelled.

Go to Italy, Marie reiterated. I know you well, know how you love that country, know you’re more yourself there than anywhere else. Once again on Italian soil, you’ll be rejuvenated.

She knew, of course, that my mind was already made up, that nothing short of catastrophe would keep me from going. We agreed I’d document the trip, keep a journal for her vicarious sharing on my return.

*****

PART ONE

Enroute

Not an auspicious start, I thought, as security personnel had me step aside at Albuquerque International Airport’s check-in stations. We were a few weeks away from the first anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, but I had traveled by air since that horrendous event, never experienced inordinate security checks and hadn’t anticipated one now. My carry-on small suitcase and a camera bag were twice examined by x-ray, I was asked to raise arms while a metal-detecting scanner was passed over my body. Three security people conferred, quizzically observing the little white-haired old man, supported by a cane, who was wondering what indeed they searched.

I was asked to loosen my trousers’ belt, cold hands explored my stomach and lower back. I was told to sit and remove my shoes, which were inspected by each of the three security guards. The suitcase and camera bag were open, being searched. I sat, unshod, unbuckled, determined not to be embarrassed by fellow travelers staring my way and hoping they’d be spared similar treatment. I remembered a telecast I’d seen just a week earlier in which a panel discussing The War on Terror had concluded that airport security should concentrate less on searching for weapons—too often resulting in uncovering nail files, corkscrew openers and the like—more on studying passengers who betrayed potential for violence. I looked like a terrorist!

One of the guards held aloft my pipe cleaner, a 2 and ¼ folding metal tool which featured a sheathed 1 and ¾ scraper. He’d retrieved it from a tobacco pouch among the suitcase items.

You cannot carry this onto the airplane, he said.

Anything you say, I managed to respond

Never before a strenuous trek, the walk from check-in to departure gate was this day an ordeal. The wheeled-suitcase, though small, was tightly packed, too heavy. The strap of the camera bag dug into my shoulder. A toothache, which had commenced the day before, was throbbing. Unaccustomed to a cane, I nearly tripped over it a few times. What was I doing, into my eightieth year, venturing alone on a