We note with sadness that Channel Zero's de facto Chief of Staff and Artist in Residence, Joseph Zamparelli's mother Margaret "Peggy" Zamparelli died last Thursday after a thirty year fight with Alzheimer's Disease.
She was nursed and cared for at home for all that time by a matched pair of heroes better know to all as her husband Joe Sr. and son, Joe Jr.
Alzheimer's is a catastrophe, it relentlessly reverses the parent-child relationship and piteously obliterates the spousal tie.
That was the world inhabited by the Zamparellis for thirty long years.
Nothing less than love of a pure and acute type could motivate anyone to such sacrifice and devotion given the nature of the challenge and the inevitable outcome.
For it is usually the case that persons in Peggy Zamparelli's nigh comatose condition are remanded to the care of a nursing home and the easy neglect that comes of a fast failing mind and personality.
Not so in the Zamparelli house, they leased a hospital bed, brought in home health aides, kept up bright chatter around Mrs. Zamparelli's slowly failing self and never ever gave up.
Their devotion to duty is an object lesson to the rest of us, that love cannot survive without sacrifice. It is the willingness to bear burdens of the heart, that make us human and humane.
I never really knew Peggy Zamparelli she was already incoherent and in decline by the time I got to know Joe Junior.
However I am well acquainted with, and in awe of, the love and loyalty shown her by her husband and son.
My Late Aunt Agnes (also an Alzheimer's sufferer) once opined that we start with family, add friends and suchlike but in the end, we end up with family again.
So Peggy goes from us, with love and with her family.
Rest in Peace, Mrs. Z