The Tea Servant

By Sebastian Di Mattia

This is a memoir of the most tragic event to have visited upon my life. It is a true retelling of my four year struggle to save one of God's gratest sculptures, my wife Elisabeta whom I valued more than anything on earth.  

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sebastian Di Mattia
• Release date: Jul 24, 2017
• ISBN: 9781545050064

Sebastian Di Mattia

He is the son of immigrant parents, born in Philadelphia, Pa and educated in the catholic school system. He spent most of his working carreer on the Philadelphia waterfront. He has one beautiful daughter and currently resides in Orlando Florida. He is recently widowed since January 1st 2017. He plans to continue his work as an author and wishes to add to his other nine titles on Amazon and Evloved Publishing.

Book preview

Dedicated to my wife Elisabeta

and all caregivers.

Foreword

You are about to embark upon a heart-wrenching journey of love and loss. You are offered a front row seat to the desperation and helplessness of a loving partner doing everything in his power to cope with increasing demands without adequate support.

The story captures the enormous stress of caregivers that is all too often overlooked. The backdrop demonstrates the epically disjointed healthcare system where psychological symptoms of physical manifestations routinely get ignored and misunderstood. Reflected by a multitude of healthcare professionals who each has limited vision of the condition. There is an urgent need for a more synchronized advocacy, especially when it comes to more complex cases.

Sigrun Sigurjonsdottir, Phdc.

Chapter One

It’s Valentine’s Day 2017, as her ashes pour into the flower garden in front of the house, the very spot she cherished the most, the moment suddenly felt surreal, as if being viewed from a distant place. I’ve buried my parents in the past but this was something different, there were family and friends to share memories and stories of the past back then, but they’re all gone now. Painful overwhelming grief had me in its grip since January 1st. The end of the road stood before me but it only strengthened my resolve to do good for others in my situation. The agonizing truth was that an empty house waited for me when the short ceremony was over, and the beginning of a new and unknown existence lay ahead of me. The truth wrapped its cold arms around me and brought me to an understanding, that for the first time in my sorry life I had no one to go home to after the burial. A single red rose stood tall and proud in the loose dirt. A single red rose that meant so much transported me back in time when our story began... 

Call me greedy, selfish or what have you, but twenty-five years ago good fortune or fate if you will, brought me to a place where upon entering, my eyes locked onto the most beautiful girl there. She was one of God’s greatest sculptures, clearly out of my league, but something inside of me told me to go forward. After all, what was to be lost besides my pride?

Yeah, what pride? I was recovering from a seven-year marriage that went down the drain when we returned from the honeymoon.

Visions of this goddess giving me the Cold Shoulder or perhaps throwing a drink in my face ran vividly through my mind; however the time had come for action lest someone else might beat me to her. You might have thought that my heart was about to explode as it pounded harder with each step toward her.

After introducing myself, a wave of relief swept over my tightly wound, shaky confidence. She was shy, but allowed me to go on with my nervous ramblings. A nearly overwhelming fear she would become bored with me and leave for the evening drove me on; another chance with this woman seemed out of the realm of possibility. It was now or never; this stunning woman had bewitched me with barely saying a word. Her name was Samantha; she had eyes that I couldn’t break my gaze from, but she didn’t seem to mind.

We met at a dinner club, where she had no interest in drinking, but rather came for the music and dancing. Not being very good at it, dancing was avoided as much as possible, but this was her night and she asked; so what is a man supposed to do?

The short trek to the dance floor seemed more like a march to the gallows where my cool exterior was about to be executed in a most public fashion. Audaciously my body found some sort of groove, and then logic eased my fears.

No one was looking at me anyway.

When people looked to the dance floor they saw a glamorous woman dancing beautifully while a crazy man, possibly having some sort of medical issue was carefully trying not to make a fool of himself. They didn’t know whether to call 911 or throw a tablecloth over me. The slow songs were another matter; merely following her lead and staying off of her toes could hide my ineptness.

Her perfume was hypnotic and the warmth of her body sent shivers down my spine, by then there was no doubt, the most beautiful and glamorous woman in the club was dancing with me. We were two people, afloat in our own galaxy.

I was thirty-eight when we met and she was forty-seven, but we looked good together, in fact it seemed that wherever we went, everyone wanted to be us. It was the most magical event to happen to me while trying to shake off the devastating seven year hell ride with a woman who seemed more interested with spending the night smoking cigarettes and talking on the phone. When the decision was made to move in with this devil woman, she quit her job as a hairdresser the following