Funeral and Memorial Costs for Charles Gargiulo Jr
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On May 26th, 2019, Charles Gargiulo Jr. was with his family in Geneva, NY for my (his goddaughter's) college graduation. On this day, he was able to watch me walk from Cornell University, as the first niece to graduate from college so far.
Three days later, my dear Uncle Charlie took his life. He had been fighting for over 12 years. I knew him sick longer than I had known him healthy.
When I was 10 years old, Uncle Charlie moved in with my family, five brothers and sisters and my parents, as he was diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer in his leg. After years of chemo, it was decided that his leg needed to be amputated.
Following this, the cancer was found to have metastasized to his lungs, and he needed major surgery to remove it. With time, he was finally in remission. However, his suffering did not end there. The years of chemo took a toll on his body, and the man who once loved eating healthy and running and loved life, was now plagued with gastroparesis. This meant that all the food that he once loved and was able to enjoy was not possible for him to eat without horrible pain.
Along with this, Uncle Charlie was losing his memory at an alarming rate. Anyone who knew my uncle, knew he was one to tell stories and loved making everyone laugh.
In the last year of his life, he was not the same person I grew up knowing and loving. He had lost that spark that made him who he was, as he feared he would not be able to remember anything. On July 26th, 2018, he made a post on Facebook saying:
"This may be my final "longer" Facebook post (final post period?) for awhile. I realize that writing that will probably prompt questions, a desire for explanations. Why? What is this about? Etc? This post will possibly be shocking and/or upsetting and that is part of why I hesitated until I felt like I was running out of time to be able to post this.
The truth is there are a couple of main reasons. 1) My hands and fingers have become increasingly unable to physically write even simple simple texts or comments on Facebook. Why? I am not completely sure but I realize that the way I am communicating today has become virtually impossible most of the time, most days.
Physically holding a phone is often even challenging for me.
2) This one is the hardest to admit and maybe harder to explain. My brain quite simply barely works these days. By that I mean, my ability to concentrate and remembering ALMOST ANYTHING has slipped closer to zero than I want to admit. I still (so far) remember the names and faces of most of my friends and family but Even That I fear I am in danger of losing. I can barely tell you what I did earlier in the day. Sadly, these days the majority of memories with friends and family I Need to be reminded of to sort of remember them again for probably a short time. I remember the way friends and family make me feel emotionally, in a general way. But specifically, no more than a few examples about why I feel that way.
I hope that somehow this is reversible. That it's just a symptom of severe depression as has been suggested by some medical professionals and even if it were somehow reversible sooner than later this post will, at least, explain what has been happening to me for the last several months to weeks. It will explain my involuntary social isolation.
It is frankly, scary, heartbreaking, constantly causing anxiety about not forgetting basic to do lists, or what a friend, family members, doctor told me.
I HATE THIS SO MUCH. Perhaps my greatest nightmare has always been to get Alzheimer's, "lose" my mind. And while this is probably not anything like that, I feel like this is probably not going away anytime soon and in fact has been still "progressing" rapidly enough that soon I feel I will Both not be able to hide that "something" is clearly wrong And be completely unable to explain, at all, why and what is wrong.
THAT is why I felt the need to write this jarring post. I want to explain part of why I don't return emails, texts or calls most of the time. I was worried I would seem drugged or "off" and lead to questions I probably didn't want to be asked or felt able to answer.
It really bothers me to think of how many people I might be upsetting or letting down or making them sad by writing this post but I needed to explain in one place with one consistent message what is going on with me.
I apologize especially to friends and family who are finding this news about me THIS way. If my brain wasn't so dysfunctional Already, I would have taken the time to try to explain individually to many of you but I feel I have run out of time, possibly for the forseeable future.
Because of the very diminished capacity I have to communicate, regrettably I will probably not be able to respond to either comments, questions or emails in response to the post. I WILL TRY to read them while I am still comprehending people's comments.
I suspect any comments might be emotional. I will do my best emotionally to read them when my heart and head can take it.
Finally, I love many of you and am friends or friendly with so many others. I really really wish this were not happening.
And, if I can actually communicate again sometime soon, the first thing I would probably work on would be a sincere apology for the alarm caused by this post.
However, I can't predict the future but I CAN tell what I have been feeling for too long now and SO round the clock now and where my mind (and hands) has been trending (not good).
So, with sadness and remorse I say goodbye for now and thank you to you all until or if this problem corrects itself.
With LOVE and APPRECIATION in my heart, Farewell Facebook until..??"
This post shared his fears and what was quickly becoming his reality.
As a family with a new college graduate, two in college, and two more who will be entering college in two years, the expenses have set us back.
We have lost an incredible man who made all of us so incredibly happy. He touched the lives of so many people, and we are grateful for the time that we were fortunate enough to have spent with him. I am so incredibly happy to know that he was able to watch me walk across that stage on my graduation, but it is with heavy heart that I write that he is no longer here.
As we know, many of his friends that he loved so dearly are across the country, so we are looking to host a memorial service around his birthday in August, in order to have a proper goodbye. If you are able, we would greatly appreciate any donations to help offset the costs of the funeral and the memorial service we are looking to do.
Thank you in advance.
Tatiana Suero
Online Obituary
Three days later, my dear Uncle Charlie took his life. He had been fighting for over 12 years. I knew him sick longer than I had known him healthy.
When I was 10 years old, Uncle Charlie moved in with my family, five brothers and sisters and my parents, as he was diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer in his leg. After years of chemo, it was decided that his leg needed to be amputated.
Following this, the cancer was found to have metastasized to his lungs, and he needed major surgery to remove it. With time, he was finally in remission. However, his suffering did not end there. The years of chemo took a toll on his body, and the man who once loved eating healthy and running and loved life, was now plagued with gastroparesis. This meant that all the food that he once loved and was able to enjoy was not possible for him to eat without horrible pain.
Along with this, Uncle Charlie was losing his memory at an alarming rate. Anyone who knew my uncle, knew he was one to tell stories and loved making everyone laugh.
In the last year of his life, he was not the same person I grew up knowing and loving. He had lost that spark that made him who he was, as he feared he would not be able to remember anything. On July 26th, 2018, he made a post on Facebook saying:
"This may be my final "longer" Facebook post (final post period?) for awhile. I realize that writing that will probably prompt questions, a desire for explanations. Why? What is this about? Etc? This post will possibly be shocking and/or upsetting and that is part of why I hesitated until I felt like I was running out of time to be able to post this.
The truth is there are a couple of main reasons. 1) My hands and fingers have become increasingly unable to physically write even simple simple texts or comments on Facebook. Why? I am not completely sure but I realize that the way I am communicating today has become virtually impossible most of the time, most days.
Physically holding a phone is often even challenging for me.
2) This one is the hardest to admit and maybe harder to explain. My brain quite simply barely works these days. By that I mean, my ability to concentrate and remembering ALMOST ANYTHING has slipped closer to zero than I want to admit. I still (so far) remember the names and faces of most of my friends and family but Even That I fear I am in danger of losing. I can barely tell you what I did earlier in the day. Sadly, these days the majority of memories with friends and family I Need to be reminded of to sort of remember them again for probably a short time. I remember the way friends and family make me feel emotionally, in a general way. But specifically, no more than a few examples about why I feel that way.
I hope that somehow this is reversible. That it's just a symptom of severe depression as has been suggested by some medical professionals and even if it were somehow reversible sooner than later this post will, at least, explain what has been happening to me for the last several months to weeks. It will explain my involuntary social isolation.
It is frankly, scary, heartbreaking, constantly causing anxiety about not forgetting basic to do lists, or what a friend, family members, doctor told me.
I HATE THIS SO MUCH. Perhaps my greatest nightmare has always been to get Alzheimer's, "lose" my mind. And while this is probably not anything like that, I feel like this is probably not going away anytime soon and in fact has been still "progressing" rapidly enough that soon I feel I will Both not be able to hide that "something" is clearly wrong And be completely unable to explain, at all, why and what is wrong.
THAT is why I felt the need to write this jarring post. I want to explain part of why I don't return emails, texts or calls most of the time. I was worried I would seem drugged or "off" and lead to questions I probably didn't want to be asked or felt able to answer.
It really bothers me to think of how many people I might be upsetting or letting down or making them sad by writing this post but I needed to explain in one place with one consistent message what is going on with me.
I apologize especially to friends and family who are finding this news about me THIS way. If my brain wasn't so dysfunctional Already, I would have taken the time to try to explain individually to many of you but I feel I have run out of time, possibly for the forseeable future.
Because of the very diminished capacity I have to communicate, regrettably I will probably not be able to respond to either comments, questions or emails in response to the post. I WILL TRY to read them while I am still comprehending people's comments.
I suspect any comments might be emotional. I will do my best emotionally to read them when my heart and head can take it.
Finally, I love many of you and am friends or friendly with so many others. I really really wish this were not happening.
And, if I can actually communicate again sometime soon, the first thing I would probably work on would be a sincere apology for the alarm caused by this post.
However, I can't predict the future but I CAN tell what I have been feeling for too long now and SO round the clock now and where my mind (and hands) has been trending (not good).
So, with sadness and remorse I say goodbye for now and thank you to you all until or if this problem corrects itself.
With LOVE and APPRECIATION in my heart, Farewell Facebook until..??"
This post shared his fears and what was quickly becoming his reality.
As a family with a new college graduate, two in college, and two more who will be entering college in two years, the expenses have set us back.
We have lost an incredible man who made all of us so incredibly happy. He touched the lives of so many people, and we are grateful for the time that we were fortunate enough to have spent with him. I am so incredibly happy to know that he was able to watch me walk across that stage on my graduation, but it is with heavy heart that I write that he is no longer here.
As we know, many of his friends that he loved so dearly are across the country, so we are looking to host a memorial service around his birthday in August, in order to have a proper goodbye. If you are able, we would greatly appreciate any donations to help offset the costs of the funeral and the memorial service we are looking to do.
Thank you in advance.
Tatiana Suero
Online Obituary
Organizer
Tatiana Suero
Organizer
Pepperell, MA