For Alex Pretti and All at the VA
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Here’s to Alex Pretti. And here’s to his memory.
The VA, especially the VA nurses, took stellar care of my dad from the first day he entered into our care in April 2018 till the day he passed in January 2024.
Once we fully and immediately discovered that my dad could not live on his own after my mom suddenly passed, the VA helped us transition dad's care from UPMC Pittsburgh docs and his team at the Pittsburgh VA hospital to full care through the Erie VA Medical Center for two years while he lived with me and Emily in Western NY. Then the VA oversaw his care transition to the James E. Van Zandt VA Medical Center and the State College VA Clinic when he and Emily and I relocated to our home here in Central PA in September 2020.
When we knew it was no longer safe for Dad to be under our care . . . he did not sleep, so we did not sleep . . . and he had already fallen and broken a hip under my care, had multiple organs failing, and needed to be on constant watch among other incredibly challenging physical and emotional needs . . . the VA was there for us again in August 2022 as we moved him into 24-hour care at the Hollidaysburg Veterans' Home. He shared beautiful friendships with the nurses and the doctors there (one of whom I was just in touch with today). When it was time to call hospice services in, the VA coordinated with AseraCare Hospice Care in Altoona, PA.
We had so many moving parts between April 2028 and January 2024 . . . His social worker, the nurses, and the doctors through that time were angels. Big healers and space holders. I weep as I type this note, feeling the immense gratitude to those who cared and put their hearts on the line every day. They helped us with his meds, his oxygen needs (he had advanced COPD, so was on 6 litres of Oxygen 24/7), and they helped us make our home more safe and accessible to him. They coordinated his care between VA docs and community care docs (our record stood at 23 medical appointments for Dad within 13 days). They helped us coordinate emergency transport (multiple ambulance rides from Findley Lake to the ER in Erie, and then from Pennsylvania Furnace to the ER in State College).
The VA not only helped my dad, they also helped keep me and my family intact. I am still here today because of the VA and the care and support they provided to me as Dad's primary (and extremely overwhelmed) caregiver. The AseraCare Hospice group, along with the VA, then helped hold our hands and reassure us all in the final two months of Dad’s care right up until the moment he passed when his primary hospice nurse, Clarissa, was with us as I held my dad when he took his last breath.
To say that the VA and our veterans deserve respect is a watered down phrase. There are no words for how to distill this into the essence it deserves. I still am trying to find the words for how profound their impact and care touched us. My dad was a loving and incredibly complicated man. He had many psychological and physical needs including addiction to meds (many which were/are heavily regulated) and alcohol. His psychological needs were even greater than his physical needs. Perhaps that’s a story for another day . . .
The nurses not only cared for my dad, they also became his friends. Dad’s needs were great, and he was in a dedicated wing of the VA hospital reserved for veterans who had equally great needs. I saw so much when I was there with Dad . . . How the nurses and the docs showed up for all their patients every single day. They shared their time and their stories with my dad, sitting with him, talking with him. Asking him stories about his life and sharing stories of their own lives. My dad had a way of inviting everyone in his world to share their stories, a most vulnerable and healing place where my dad could hold space better than anyone I know. I will remain forever grateful for these incredibly special moments with these earth-based angels in scrubs. I hope to write and share more about these years of Dad’s care, and to share more about how the VA helped hold us together for close to seven years of what I can definitely call the most intense, stressful, and deeply taxing time of my life.
To know the VA is now honoring one of their own this week is heartbreaking. Alex Pretti died needlessly on Saturday, shot in broad daylight, on a sidewalk, in front of a donut shop, in service of helping a fellow community member. His last words to her: “Are you ok?”
I pray for Alex Pretti and his family. I pray for those who love him and who now will miss him. I pray for those who honor him now and always. I pray for the many veterans and their families he cared for. I pray for all who are in the helping and service professions. I pray for those who are needlessly losing their lives, for all families who are broken apart by federal agents (especially without due process). I pray for all who live in fear in these lean and uncertain times. I pray for all who are actively stepping up and who are calling out the atrocities of this administration.
If you have stayed with me this far in this post, thank you. I conclude by making one thing clear: I commit to keeping my heart open and I commit to keeping my eyes and my mind open even more.
Mistake not my soft and open heart and eyes. Keeping them open takes daily work (sometimes moment-by-moment). A lifetime of being fed bullshit stories and living through (and doing my best to heal) dysfunctional family patterns within myself; living through the daily hellscape of caring for my beautiful dad while also trying to raise a teenager, keep my relationship with my husband and my stepdaughter intact, pandemic isolation, keeping up with my own work as best as possible; caring for myself in the midst of all of this and learning what my own needs are (???). I am sharper, more resolute, and I am also tough as fucking nails.
After witnessing the atrocities of this current administration and waking up the next day and praying for a better one . . .
Let me make ONE thing clear: if you still support this administration, I invite you to take a good, clean, sober look in the mirror. Ask yourself what part of history you want to be a part of. This administration is a part of history I have never and will NOT support. My boundaries are intact and fortified. I am solid in my commitment.
Thank God my dad passed when he did. As a lifelong Republican until 2020, an Army veteran, a hometown banker, a dedicated member of Rotary International and many community groups . . . As a loyal husband and an even more amazing father, my dad was outraged and regularly horrified at Trump Version 1.0. He’d lose his shit over Version 2.0. We most certainly did not upgrade.
God, please help us all and hold our country strong. Thank you, Alex Pretti, and thanks to the VA for helping our veterans.
