When God Creates a Musician: A Caregiver's Story

By Terrance Little

Tony had pretty much lived his life on his own terms but now, in his eighties, things were much more challenging. "Getting old isn't for sissies." he often said. He needed help and needed it fast as his world was rapidly changing due to his illness and age. Help would come, but from a most unlikely source.

"When God Creates a Musician" is a true story about a caregiving journey that Tony, a renowned musician, and his son-in-law would take over a five-year period as they fought the ravages of the elder's dementia. It is a memoir about highs and lows, successes and failures, hope and despair and, most importantly, about courage and love. While the story ends the way all stories about dementia end, it is a unique account about an epidemic-sized problem facing countless families, which is set against the backdrop of South Carolina's Lowcountry. It might make you laugh, cry, smile or sigh, but hopefully it will give you an insight into the tough challenges that millions of professional and lay caregivers face each day as well as give you an acute appreciation for the tremendous job they do.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Mar 11, 2024
• ISBN: 9798350930115

Terrance Little

Terrance Little along with his wife Victoria Agresta Little and Gabrial the Scottish Terrier, now make their home in Seabrook Island, S.C., among the ancient oaks, palm trees, tidal marshes and ocean shore. Mr. Little grew up in Saratoga, N.C., a small town in the rural eastern part of the State, where he and his four siblings were lovingly guided to literature and music by their mother, Roberta Turnmyre Little, as well as by many aunts and uncles, public school teachers and neighbors. Following his graduation from East Carolina University (go Pirates), with degrees in political science and journalism, Mr. Little worked as a reporter for the Rocky Mount Evening Telegram, a notable North Carolina daily and was a stringer for the Associated Press. After a short time, he became business and political editor. Following his stint as a journalist, Terrance enrolled in graduate school at New York University (go Violets) where he received a master's degree in public finance. Upon graduation, he began a long, rewarding career on Wall Street, where he was a corporate executive for premier global financial services concerns. During that time, he worked on some of the largest and most innovative investment banking transactions and also acted as an advisor/consultant to medium and start-up companies. Mr. Little has traveled extensively throughout the world and maintains particular interest in France, Argentina and Eastern Europe. He has served on Boards of publicly-traded companies, the ECU Educational Foundation and the St. Jude Childrens' Reaearch Hospital - Liberty Bowl, to name a few. Currently, Terrance is busy doing research for another book, working to improve his golf game, collecting antique cartographic art and generally enjoying life while managing his business interest.

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Cover of When God Creates a Musician by Terrance Little

When God Creates a Musician

A Caregiver’s Story

©2023 TERRANCE LITTLE

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

print ISBN: 979-8-35093-010-8

ebook ISBN: 979-8-35093-011-5

Contents

When God Creates a Musician

Something Just Isn’t Right

What Was That Woman Talking About

Why Do People with Dementia Love Easter?

Are You Crazy, You Can’t Do This By Yourself

Those Aren’t Enemy Planes, They’re A Bunch of Pelicans

My Memory Isn’t as Sharp as It Used To Be Also,

My Memory Isn’t as Sharp as It Used To Be

You Don’t Need Pants to Boil Eggs

Safe, Because Torpedoes Were Too Hard to Come By

It’s Scary When You Start Making the Same Noises as Your Coffee Maker!!

Get Me Out of Here, There’s too Many Old People in This Place!

I Love This Place – I Hate This Place

If I Was Single, I Would Ask Her to Marry Me

The Light Goes Out Because the Dawn Has Come

Blessed Are Those Who Mourn for They Will Be Comforted

I’ll Be Seeing You

Prologue —For What It’s Worth

Author’s Note

This book was written prior to the COVID pandemic, an event that has greatly magnified and reinforced one of the major tenets of this memoir — the importance, courage and commitment of both professional and lay caregivers. While working under a brighter spotlight has brought more recognition of their vital and universal contribution to society, the virus has also multiplied the difficulties and dangers of their work. It has made a tough job harder and a risky endeavor more precarious.

Dedicating this book to the thousands upon thousands of professional health care workers, as well as the millions of family members, friends and anybody else caring for another human being in need, is my way of saying, Thank You!

I would also like to acknowledge and thank my mother, Roberta Turnmyre Little, for instilling in her children the true meaning of love, devotion and sacrifice, along with a deep appreciation for books and literature. I am especially grateful to my siblings — John (Butch), Phil, Pam and Mike — and their spouses for being there for our parents during their time of sickness and need. We all grew up in a small rural town, Saratoga, N.C., where taking care of neighbors and others facing problems and adversity is in the DNA. If someone needed help, you helped them. If someone was weak or sick, you supported them. It was all very Golden-Rule simple.

As a means for preserving privacy, I altered some of the names of people and places appearing in this book. This excludes, of course, all the main characters.

Hopefully, as we emerge from COVID’s dark cloud the newfound appreciation and respect for caregivers will not diminish as the world gets back to normal. And to end on a bright note, let me cite two developments. One, through the Credit for Caring Act, Congress is considering providing vital financial assistance to families taking care of adult members in need. Two, the FDA has approved the first-ever medication designed to slow the progress of Alzheimer’s and promising research in treating and preventing dementia — such as signaling molecules — is advancing at a rapid pace. Godspeed to both.

When God Creates a Musician

We pulled up in front of the church, right behind the black Cadillac hearse, a little ahead of schedule at 9:30 am. The Church of the Blessed Sacrament looked nicer than usual as the sun glistened off its yellow bricks and stained glass on that clear May morning. Not as elegant nor as historic as St. John the Baptist, the Catholic Cathedral in downtown Charleston, but the family agreed that Blessed Sacrament on Highway 17 would be much easier for everyone to navigate compared to the perpetual traffic jam that King and Meeting Streets — and most of the city for that matter —had become during rush hours.

The rest of the immediate family arrived before us – Antoinette, aka Kleo, (the oldest daughter) and her husband Nick Sarant, their son Christopher and his wife Amy and their two young daughters Hannah and Ivy. About a hundred other people, including cousins, friends and a lot of local musicians milled about the entrance as Victoria Agresta Little (the youngest daughter and my wife) and I emerged from the car.

Of course, the funeral’s headliner — Anthony Joseph Agresta — who died four days earlier at the age of 91 – was reclining in the back of the hearse, dressed in black-tie, waiting to make his last grand entrance. Tony, as most of his friends and relatives called him, took his first breath on February 4, 1924— born to Rafael and Francesca Di Nicola Agresta amid the coal mines and hardscrabble of Hazleton, Pennsylvania. The ninth of eleven children, he was raised mostly by his oldest sister Mary following his mother’s death in childbirth when he was only eleven. He learned how to cut hair from Nietzsche, the local barber down the street from his house, and graduated high school. Both accomplishments were driven by a visit when he was a kid to the coal mine where his father worked. Anthony, you must learn a trade and go to school, or you have to go down in the hole, Rafael told him in broken English as he pointed to the soot covered doorway of the mineshaft. While Anthony was always proud of his father and his coal mining roots, he wanted no part of going down in the hole.

Immediately following his high school graduation, Tony enlisted in the U.S. Coast Guard in 1942. He was stationed at the base in Charleston, SC after finishing basic training, and there met the love of his life, a southern belle, Elizabeth Eugenia Eastwood. He and Betty – as her friends and relatives called her – would have three children, including Rosemary Elizabeth, who passed away in 1986 at the age of 33. Right after World War II ended the young Agresta family moved up north, first to Manhattan and then to Long Island, New York. Over the years, Tony evolved into many things – breadwinner, father, husband, barber, veteran, friend, uncle, neighbor, etc.

But Tony, from an early age, was really only one thing above all else, a musician. His heart, his mind and most importantly his lungs were made for one thing – to blow through that brass cylindrical tube bent into an S. The trombone. And boy, could he play. Many of his peers have told me that he was the best on that instrument over the past 50 years. It was his sound, not his technique that brought such acclaim. He was blessed with the feel as they would say. Tony played with some of the best known Big Bands of the 40s and 50s, he played for Presidents and the British Royal Family, he played in recording studios, on Broadway and in the New York Jet band, he played in dives and old folks’ homes, he played in orchestras and trios. For nearly 80 years he did what he was meant to do, he blew that horn.

Father Joseph Romanoski brought his A-game to the funeral, celebrating a Mass that honored Tony, while producing comfort, joy and buckets of tears to those who turned out for the trombone meister. He was aided briefly by Victoria (the younger) when she shared Thoughts of my Father, a piece she had written months earlier, after Tony was diagnosed with dementia and heart disease.

"He married a beautiful woman and gave us life….three girls. He taught us to ride bikes, share our toys and laugh……a lot.

He showed me how to defend myself against the neighborhood bully. And it worked.

He would pretend to be a horse and Rosemary and I would ride on his back while he crawled round and round indefinitely. I think he enjoyed it even more that we did. We’d sit on the back stoop shucking corn as he would sing Ques-Sera-Sera. How can I ever forget.

He was the first to take me to Church, give me my faith and to tease me when I seemed too religious.

I morphed into a teen and began to rebel, saw his flaws and edited out some of his good. I could not yet see who I was or who I would become, but it wasn’t going to be like my Dad or Mom.

That didn’t last long. Truth prevailed and I understood that I wasn’t perfect either and that television fathers were boring.

My father surrounded us with great music and guided me in the selection of an instrument and ensuing lessons. I had some of his genes and he recognized that. Although I chose not to pursue a musical career for my own reasons, he never ceased being that still small voice in my life who from time to time would gently ask, have you picked up your flute lately?

And when I finally did years later and played for the community, I had no finer friend, or bigger fan and advocate, than my daddy.

An artist at birth, my father was tied to the eternal choirs, sometimes obsessed or perhaps misunderstood, and when the music began to wane so did he.

How can I better honor him at this time than to acknowledge that when God creates a musician, he prepares them for His eternal orchestra. Daddy play well, always be yourself and please prepare a place for us. Eternal peace and music. I love you.

The words of the daughter and the priest, the ritual and music of the Mass, as well as the swirling memories that each attendee had of Tony, quickly sent emotions soaring. People were smiling and crying – then crying and smiling — at the same time. The effect was so strong and profound that it defied gravity, pulling almost everyone out of their seats and into the line for communion.

The crowd was probably about a third Catholic, half Protestant and the rest, well, who knows? But nearly all went up. It was spontaneous and unique — and certainly against the guidance and direction that Father Romanoski had given at the beginning of the service, please, only Catholics should participate in communion. People wanted to share one last meal with their friend. This wasn’t the first time that Tony spurred a defiance of convention, but unfortunately it would be his last.

After the Mass the funeral procession proceeded down Highway 17 to Live Oak Memorial Cemetery, where Tony would join Elizabeth and Rosemary who lay side by side in plot #131B next to the tulip tree. Reverend Romanoski and the Coast Guard color guard placed him at final rest in impressive fashion (more on that later).

His burial marked the end of a journey that Tony and I took together over a five-year period. It started just after Victoria and I moved down to Johns Island, South Carolina (right across the Stono River from Charleston) from Hoboken, New Jersey in April 2010.

It was a journey neither Tony nor I had planned, and I certainly wasn’t prepared for the twists and turns and highs and lows that lay ahead. To be honest, most of the time I didn’t know what the hell I was doing, or as Tony would say, I was ‘playing without a chart."

This kind of trip isn’t about schedules or itineraries — stuff happens when it wants to happen whether you are ready or not. I would not recommend it for anyone, but few who take it have a choice. And, as much as you would like to avoid it, eventually it is staring you right in the face. You have to deal with it.

Something Just Isn’t Right

Dementia, according to the Mayo Clinic, is not a disease. Rather, it describes a group of symptoms affecting memory, thinking and social abilities severely enough to interfere with daily functioning. Dementia indicates problems with at least two brain functions, such as memory loss, impaired judgement or language, and the ability to perform everyday tasks. The most frequent types of dementia are Alzheimer’s disease, Lewy-body dementia and Vascular dementia. The first two types are thought to occur as a result of damage done to nerve cells in the brain, while Vascular dementia results from damage due to reduced or blocked blood flow in vessels leading to the brain.

The symptoms of dementia may vary depending on the cause but among the most commonly occurring signs are:

Cognitive Changes

Memory loss

Difficulty communicating or finding words

Difficulty with complex tasks

Difficulty with planning and organizing

Difficulty with coordination and motor function

Problems with disorientation, such as getting lost

Psychological Changes

Personality changes

Inability to reason

Inappropriate behavior

Paranoia

Agitation

Hallucinations

While far from scientific but perhaps much more meaningful, I describe Dementia as the ultimate bandit. It steals everything that you were, that you are and that you will be. Dementia robs your past by erasing your memory, it steals your present by making you disabled and it commits larceny on your future by killing you. Like a master thief, this bandit works methodically and usually without detection at first. It never takes a day off. It’s relentless.

Although Tony was blessed with extraordinary musical talent, he was typical in so many other ways. He was of average stature – around 5’8" and 170 pounds. He looked like your typical elderly Latin male – white hair, pronounced nose, deep set large eyes (he reminded me of Pablo Picasso when he wore a hat). And, he had that stereotypical gregarious Italian personality, deep passions (especially about music) and a quick temper.

The man was a kid at heart. He loved to laugh, tell a joke and was an artist with a trombone, paint brush and hair clipper. But, like many artists and musicians, Tony was absent minded, sometimes one dimensional