OUR FAMILY IN ITALY

This is me with my sister zia Anna, my mother/nonna and your cousins Giorgio and Lorenzo.

I’ve had a very good time with my family from Milan today, we remembered together summer vacations we did in many beautiful places in the Mediterranean, places we saw and learned about plus some strange people we encountered in our travels to go to those vacations spots.



Remembering those times made us feel much younger with the same enthusiasm we always still now have about life and novelties.

The father of my cousins Alba and Vittorio was the CEO of the car company Alfa Romeo and was always a very strict teacher of math for his children/my cousins and his brother Gianfranco, my dad and your nonno.

Alba now owns a store of Arabic objects and arts and Vittorio is an university professor of psychology in Rome and came to Santa Barbara from Milan when I first had the accident.

Since he is a very important university professor he knows well many neurologists and I therefore asked him to find out about certain therapies that I’m hoping can make my life easier and with less pain.

My biggest pain however isn’t one that can be treated by medications, it’s about not being with you both and not teaching you all our history and culture that goes back several hundreds of years.

This has now become my main life goal, I want you to feel to be completely part of the Lingiardi family and build relationships across the world just like I did.

This is the kind of culture and connections that can make your life enjoyable and easier to live and this is my promise to you.

MY HIGH SCHOOL CLASS

As I’m in Verona (where I grew up) many of my High School classmates heard of me being here and organized a dinner out all together.

To my pleased amazement I didn’t at all feel to be disabled, we laughed and talked for hours about our “adventures” while getting mature and older.

I can’t even begin to give names and nicknames of my friends because impossible to translate in English but to use and remember their creation really made us all laugh very hard for hours.

The one thing that shocked me most is to see my former lass-mates talk and act just like they were doing 30 years ago.

I felt completely to be still a teenager very excited about the future with all its possibilities.

In short it’s been extremely clear to me that I left many good memories in my classmates and that even if life can be unfair at times, what really always matters is the positive attitude to things to come and the personal ability to change all we can or want.

This is the picture of the 5th year class, section B some of us are married, some with kids and others have lost either their own parents or even brothers or sisters already.

Most importantly everyone still has the same teenage appreciation of fun and experiencing such stability, with their support and encouragement took decades away from my soul.

MY VENETIAN FAMILY

This is my own family in Italy. I haven’t seen them in about 10 years, therefore it’s grown, many nephews and other very young children who are related to me through my cousins or other parts of my family.
It’s been a very happy meeting event with both old and new faces all happy to see me again, after having feared never to see me again.
Most of my joy is to see so many members of my extended family who are going to bring forward my culture, history and taste for various arts and cultures.
It’s my intention to reinforce and create relationships between all these new members of my family with my own children who being American know and see or study very little of what makes them special people of this new millennium.
In this picture I’m surrounded by my parents and closest cousins, who I put under the label of “venetian”, since they all both live very close to Venice and descend from the same grandparents who lived in Venice.
I remember growing up with them all and spending summer vacation in the same locations, besides going to the same kinds of high schools, even if we all took different degrees ad jobs.
This was my day of memories of all types, mostly good though because they are about pranks done together while teenagers.
The great advantage of all my nephews who live in Italy is that when they study history at school they can see and touch for real what the ancient cultures and people left for the future generations to experience, in fact I can still remember well my teacher of Latin and Italian literatures pointing out places and/or buildings in town not very far from us to exemplify the concepts of what he was teaching to us.
This is the unique legacy that I can give to my treasures, who can see, learn and experience the unique country that founded the whole Western culture, or our current way to see and understand the life in our world today.
Soon I’m going to have my treasures meet and spend time with their cousins here, so they will feel and understand the importance of their family ties, that are Italian just like their father who loves them so much that needs to share the wealth of culture I brought with me.

BACK TO ITALY

I’m now planning to go to my mother town, Verona to see my wonderful family and spend Easter with them.
My dear sister Anna – who’s always thinking of me – has told me already that I’m going to see cousins and family members who I haven’t seen in years.
I’m also in contact thanks to the internet (email, Skype) with several former classmates of my high school (Liceo) and I’ve planned already to get together and revive the good old times.
My dear assistant here in Ventura says that I’m going to remember the man I used to be maybe because she fears that I may forget all that she has been doing to help my rehabilitation.
While this to me is a joke I plan to feel part of a world that in a way I abandoned about 16 years ago to embrace America, that even if now in economical crisis is the undisputed leader of the world.
In fact while I see the struggles and attempts of our government to return to have a strong economy I’m seeing all the European countries inebriated by the strength of the Euro currency doing absolutely nothing to reinforce the infrastructures of their economies, so tat as soon as the US economy is going to get back in gear, Europe will return to be the old world that has always been and go through a recession probably worse than ours that will last much longer, it’s enough to look at what Greece is going through these days and I can’t see any other country close to Greece being in a better position, in my mind it’s like a time-bomb that’s going to explode with the surprise of all the victims who aren’t going to have a clue about what to do.
So I’m planning to come back to Ventura, not only for economical reasons but primarily because my children live here and even if they have my blood and genes they are completely American and will be part of the resurgence of the country.
My sister tells me that I’m going to taste the Italian foods and the Verona wines again to get used to their taste because I’ve been eating “Italianiazed” food made here for too long and when I say that something tastes good I don’t know what I’m saying.
Bottom line it’s going to be kind of a resurrection for me to be home again, after so much pain for such a long time and I’m planning to tie again relationships that have loosened up due to my accident only.

ANNINA

Anna is the name of my younger sister (by 2 years) and while growing up she would be called with the diminutive “Annina” and I always tried to protect her and take care of her from real and imaginary dangers. The family joke is that she could marry the only man who I couldn’t scare away, well now it’s the turn of Annina to take care of me, her older brother.

She has recently taken the Power Of Attorney on me replacing in this a professional in the field of helping people unable to take care of themselves and their lives/interests.

She loves me only like a real sister can do and she’s married with a man named Luca who’s very supportive and understanding of her emotional pain for having lost her older brother, me.

She’s been calling me by phone every day and she always updates me on my various interests, still alive in both countries.

Having to deal in a foreign language with legal issues is certainly not easy but her determination to protect me goes beyond what people can imagine.

She understands of my frustrations and angers and (too) often I can hear her by phone sobbing for me and my miseries.

My accident created several losses for her too, she used to consider my ex-wife like a semi-sister and my divorce due to her cheating has caused her to lose this half-sister too.

She has twin boys who are in their teens and require lots of attention and energies daily, on top she’s the one who takes care of both my parents who are growing to be very old and need support too.

In my tragedy I realize how blessed I’ve always been, not only a very successful life but also a very sweet and caring sister, so I can really say that I’m really surrounded by love, that I can transfer to my own children who eventually will meet and get to know well their cousins in Italy so that the Lingiardi name and traditions will continue. Soon I’m going to spend Easter with her and my parents in Verona (Italy) and I’m planning this to be the first of a number of overseas trips to my country of origin later followed by trips with my children who have irreplaceable Italian blood in their veins because of me.

So the way I see this upcoming trip is the beginning of my new life after my death by brain injury and I must stop here because I could write a whole book with my plans for the years to come. Anna is one of the blessings that have made my life wonderful and bearable in the time of crisis and need. She has turned from protected to protector almost overnight while carrying the load of her own growing family and my aging parents.

Thanking her in words wouldn’t compare to the measure of the load that she’s been carrying, so my thank you is going to be tangible and real forever by getting close to her including all the children, who are cousins.

SHOULDER SURGERY

I’m just back from a beautiful hospital where I had the surgical removal of the heterotopic ossification (muscle turned into bone) that my injured brain made happen about one year after the accident. I was convinced that the spasticity is a physical barrier that impedes the movement of the limbs and the ossification is a tougher barrier in the muscles movement, so I went into this surgery full of great hopes and much optimism, the surgeon who took away my ossification is very experienced in these types of surgery, he told me that he started doing them when specializing in sport surgery in PA 30 years ago and he has done hundreds of these types of surgery. I had been told that I would risk the drop of the shoulder or even that the ossification could happen again, but talking with this experienced surgeon and other important doctors in this field I learned that this ossification can happen only in the first 18 months after the TBI and the dropped shoulder is impossible because even if several tendons need to be detached from the bone the spasticity has kept the muscles in tension, so with tone. What’s however important is to begin very soon rehab with special equipment and I consider myself lucky because the local college has a course for disabled people with very new and sophisticated machine special for disabled people of many different kinds. In addition I have a gym where I live that I can use any time I want for as long as needed and I know already of 2 other places that specialize in rehab of injured people.

So in short next week I start with daily physical activity like I’ve always done in my life before the accident and I’m convinced that I’ll lose the extra weight accumulated in so many years of sitting on a wheelchair doing nothing but eating.