Standing Strong

by Teresa Giudice

  We also had some beautiful meals while we were in Puerto Rico, and one night we roasted s’mores over this huge fire pit. Overall it was an amazing bonding experience for me and my daughters, for me and my friends, and for the girls and their nonno. We all missed my mother very much. When I got home, in honor of her, I posted this on Instagram:

  Death changes everything! Time changes nothing. . . . I still miss the sound of your voice, the wisdom in your advice, the stories of your life and just being in your presence. So no, time changes nothing, I miss you as much today as I did the day you died. I just miss you!

  The day after we got home from Puerto Rico was Easter. If I’d known that my mom was going to pass away, I would have planned to stay on vacation through Sunday. But when I booked the trip, I still thought she was going to pull through and be able to come with us. So I figured we’d come back on Saturday and then be able to spend Easter Sunday together at home, as a family, the way we normally do.

  Typically, either I host Easter at my house or Joey and Melissa do it at their house; that’s how it is with most of the holidays. We organize an egg hunt for all the kids. And we cook and eat, which isn’t a surprise! We usually make lasagna and Italian pizza with ricotta and eggs. We all try to dress up, too; the kids wear hats and pretty dresses. I always put together big baskets for them with chocolate bunnies and eggs and stuff like that.

  This year, though, things were much more low-key. Since we’d just come home from Puerto Rico, I had to run out first thing Sunday morning and buy all the kids’ baskets so they’d be there when they woke up in the morning. After that, we didn’t do much. It was just like a regular Sunday. I didn’t want to do anything. My dad didn’t want to do anything. We wanted it to go by like any other day, because my mother couldn’t be with us. I took Gia to her boyfriend’s house, and then I took my other three daughters to Joe’s family’s house so they were able to spend time with them. I just went home and hung out with my dad. We relaxed and watched TV, and my brother went to see Melissa’s family. We did have family dinner together as usual, but I wasn’t in a celebratory mood.

  While the vacation had been a welcome distraction from my mom, returning to normal made it even more difficult not to dwell on her being gone. I know Easter is a holy day that represents resurrection, but all I could feel was profound loss. A pit in my stomach that I couldn’t fill no matter how hard I tried. A few days later, I posted the following poem, because it captured my emotions so well. I know it may seem silly or pointless to share these kinds of things publicly, but—in a way—it offers me a sense of relief since I’m used to bottling everything up. Also, I know there are many people who’ve lost their moms or their dads or someone close to them. If I can help even one of those people get through the hard times like I am, or if even one of those people takes solace in the same words that I do, then it’s worth it. I’ve learned it’s so important to open yourself up. No matter how painful that might be. It’s the only way to begin to heal.

  They say there is a reason,

  They say that time will heal,

  But neither time nor reason,

  Will change the way I feel,

  For no-one knows the heartache,

  That lies behind my smile,

  No-one knows how many times,

  I have broken down and cried,

  I want to tell you something,

  So there won’t be any doubt,

  You’re so wonderful to think of,

  But so hard to be without.

  —Author Unknown

  14

  * * *

  THE MOTHERLAND

  I almost didn’t make it on the Real Housewives season eight trip to Milan. Yup, you heard me right. It was touch and go until a few hours before the plane took off. But let’s backtrack for a moment.

  On the Saturday night before I was supposed to leave for Italy on Monday, I had to rush my father to the hospital. It had been a long hard day of work, which I’d capped off by attending a Cinco de Mayo party at a friend of a friend’s house in Connecticut. I was hoping to finally relax and have fun, which I did. I was planning to sleep over and return home early in the morning, but—for some reason—I made the last-minute decision to drive back to New Jersey. Someone must have been looking down on me! Because at around three o’clock in the morning, my dad woke me up to tell me that his nose was bleeding and it wouldn’t stop. So off we went to the hospital, where they were able to get it under control. Phew!

  Unfortunately, that wasn’t the end of it. The following morning it started up again. We kept waiting to see if it would stop bleeding—my father hates the hospital even more than the average person, especially since he spends so much time there—but no luck. It would stop bleeding for a few minutes and then start right back up. By 11:00 a.m. we were at the hospital again. We were there for a few hours, because these things always seem to take forever. Finally, they put some kind of rock thing in his nostrils to plug them and said we were free to leave. Again, phew!

  Or not.

  Back at home his nose was bleeding on and off. And, then, to make matters worse, he started spitting up blood clots from the blood dripping down his throat. They were enormous. I kept saying, “Oh my God, Dad! Do we need to go to the hospital again?” I mean, I could look down his throat and see the blood coming up. And then, almost immediately, the plug from his nose fell out, too. But my father was insistent that this was normal, because that’s what they’d told us at the hospital, so we waited.

  I hadn’t packed a thing yet for Italy, and I had about twenty-four hours before I had to leave. I started throwing things in my suitcases, trying to figure out what I’d need for all the different activities they’d planned for us, all the dinners and nights out, and all the scenes we were going to film. It may sound silly, but it’s a lot to think about and it’s stressful. It’s much different than when you’re just going on a vacation with your family. Not only did I have to think about what I wanted to wear in terms of clothing, but I had to consider shoes, jewelry, and other accessories. Plus makeup and toiletries. I was so anxious. It was the last thing I wanted to do when my father wasn’t feeling well.

  The whole time I was packing, I kept checking on him and he kept saying he was fine. A couple of hours later, we had our usual Sunday Italian dinner and everything seemed to be going as smoothly as possible. I should have known that was too good to be true!

  Because at 3:00 a.m—just a few hours after I’d picked up Gia at the airport—we were back at the hospital again. No joke. This time, my father was having trouble breathing, in addition to his nosebleed and the fact that he was coughing up blood. You have to understand that my dad has a lot of health issues, so while I was definitely concerned, this wasn’t that out of the ordinary for us. My dad is amazing, God bless him. He’s such a strong guy. So strong that even though he was enduring all of this, he kept saying, “Don’t worry about me. It’s just blood. I’m fine.” Really Dad? I don’t think so.

  After what happened with my mom, my motto is: You can never be too careful. I sleep in the family room with him every night. There’s a pullout bed for me, and my father sleeps on the couch. I’d be more than happy to take the couch and give him the bed, but he doesn’t like the bed because of his heart condition. He likes sleeping sideways with the sofa against his back. I pretty much have one eye open at all times. I watch him. I listen to the sound of his breathing. Audriana usually sleeps down there with me, too. Every once in a while, I’ll give her the whole bed and sleep in my own room, but it’s a rare treat. I’m just too afraid, with his unstable health, that something could happen.

  So anyway, we went to the hospital because he was having trouble breathing, and they took chest X-rays and did other tests. Blah, blah, blah; they did everything. And they saw some fluid in his lungs. Fortunately, the fluid was from the blood that was going down his throat. Thank God, otherwise they said it could have been a sign of pneumonia, which was what my mom had when they first admitted her, and
what my dad had around the time she passed. In my father’s case, it was presenting more like a sinus infection. The doctor said he’d be fine and that I could go to Italy, but that they wanted to admit him to the ICU. The ICU? What? Why? I freaked out at first. How could I leave the country while he was in intensive care? But they reassured me by saying that they just had to keep him overnight to make sure they could get his nose to stop bleeding and so that they could give him antibiotics for the sinus infection and let them kick in.

  So my dad was admitted. He wasn’t allowed to come home with us.

  I called my brother, who came to the hospital. I had to go home because my girls were home by themselves. But I went right back again the next morning early, since my flight wasn’t until that night.

  I still wasn’t sure if I should go to Milan. It seemed so far away. Too far away. I got in touch with Jim and said, “My father is in the hospital, tell them I can’t go to Italy.” Believe me, it was not a phone call I wanted to have to make. The show invests a lot of time, energy, and money into planning these trips. I wasn’t sure what they were going to say. I mean, I was sure they weren’t going to be happy about it, but I had to make certain that my dad was stable, otherwise I wasn’t going to go. He was my top priority.

  Fortunately, my producer said it wasn’t a problem. They totally understood. What else could they say?

  By the time 11:00 a.m. rolled around, I was still at the hospital and there was a car scheduled to pick me up and take me to the airport at three o’clock. I still hadn’t finished packing! Not to mention that I was so exhausted I could barely keep my eyes open.

  I took the doctor aside and said, “Listen, are you absolutely sure he’s okay? Please be completely honest with me. Otherwise I’m not going out of town. Do you understand?” My father has known his doctor for about thirty years and we’re very close with him, so I knew he’d tell me either “Teresa, you can go” or “Teresa, you can’t go.” And he said, “Teresa, you should go. He’s going to be fine. I’ll be here watching him. I’m going to keep him in the ICU for now.”

  Even though the ICU sounds intimidating, I realized that, if I was going to be out of town, it was the best place for him to be. When he’s in intensive care, he gets twenty-four-hour-a-day attention, literally around the clock. That’s when I feel safe, because I know if anything happens, there will be doctors and nurses close by to jump in. I also knew that my brother would be home, which gave me peace of mind, especially since I was going to have to put my sixteen-year-old Gia in charge of my other daughters, which I wasn’t entirely thrilled about.

  My dad ended up staying in the hospital for the entire week, straight through until Friday. Gia’s boyfriend took her there after school to visit him, and my kids had to rely on Uber or rides from their friends’ parents in order to get to their activities. Thank God the girls and I have great, loyal friends who live nearby. Everybody helped out. I told them that I was working, that I was out of town, and that my father was in the hospital, so people were extremely sympathetic and made sure everything ran as seamlessly as possible in my absence. It wasn’t ideal; my friends’ generosity was really touching.

  The whole time I was away, I called the hospital constantly to see how my dad was doing. They all know me there because my dad is a frequent patient. They gave me all the updates on him. And he has a cell phone, so I could call him directly without a problem. My brother was great, too. He and my father encouraged me to go.

  Still, I couldn’t help but feel badly for Gia. When I first saw her after I returned from Italy, she had a little breakdown. She started crying, because she was so stressed out from the previous week and having to be responsible for her sisters. She needed me, and I couldn’t be there.

  Those are the moments when I get really frustrated with Joe and wish that he was here and that he’d never screwed up. I don’t want my kids to have to go through this. But once the doctor gave me the okay, I decided I had to go to Italy. It was for work, and these trips are major events on the show. The thing is, it wouldn’t have mattered as much if the kids’ father had been around to pick up the slack.

  Though I do believe the fact that I got to go was meant to be. For me, it was an unbelievable experience, which came at the exact right time in my life—as funny as that may sound. I needed to reconnect with my mother.

  So, going back, I did end up making my flight on Monday evening. That was a close call! Of course, people recognized all of us on the plane. The person next to me told me that, even though he’d never actually watched the show, his friend was a huge fan. He was a sweet, cute guy. He said, “Can I take a picture with you?” I said okay, even though I was really hoping he wasn’t going to annoy me the whole time. Isn’t that the worst? When the passenger sitting with you wants to chat nonstop? I don’t like to talk on planes. I like to sleep, especially when I’m going internationally. But, as it turned out, he was really cool. He said, “Do you want me to wake you up when the food comes?” I smiled, and said, “Yes, please!” Then he left me alone and was very respectful. I appreciated that, because I was so tired and spent from the last couple of days.

  We took off shortly after six o’clock, and I slept through the entire ride, with just a brief break to eat. I love motion: cars, planes, trains, busses. I’m out like a light right away.

  As soon as we arrived in Milan, I went to my room to lie down. I had a beautiful room with a terrace. Melissa was excited to be there so she could buy some European pieces for her clothing store, Envy. Margaret also wanted to shop—she was planning to visit an Italian shoe factory, because she said she wanted to continue to grow her brand as well.

  When filming began, our first stop was the Duomo cathedral. I really wanted to go there because my mom loved churches. That was her thing, and it’s mine now, too. I feel so connected to her when I’m at church. And since she was born in Italy I knew that being at a church in her home country would connect me to her on a whole different level. My mom was very religious. She loved rosaries and statues of Jesus and Mary, really any saint. She was into all of it. When my mom was alive my parents would go to places like Atlantic City and Pennsylvania with these prayer groups, and they’d carry a statue of Mary with them.

  So, starting our trip off at the Duomo was perfect for me. I had a rosary that someone had made me with my mom’s photo on it, and I carried that with me everywhere we went.

  The next day, I filmed in the Navigli neighborhood, which is known for the Naviglio Grande and Naviglio Pavese canals. It’s one of the most historic districts in Milan, dating back to 1179. There are all these amazing shops and restaurants and fun bars. It’s a very cool scene. We walked around there, and there were paparazzi taking our pictures. It was really fun.

  Once we wrapped, Dolores and I passed another beautiful church, so we decided to pop in quickly. Dolores is very religious; she appreciates that stuff in the same way I do. I took a video and posted it on Instagram with the caption: I love you Mommy #milan

  That day Dolores, Margaret, and I also went food shopping and cooked with an Italian chef. That was right up my alley! It was a totally authentic Italian meal. We made homemade pappardelle with a Bolognese sauce. We stuffed zucchini flowers, threw together salad, and assembled carpaccio. When we were making the carpaccio, the chef told me to hit the cutting board really hard. So I did what he said, and I broke it! I guess I must have had some aggression bottled up! Needless to say, the carpaccio was pushed to the side. We took the fractured cutting board as a sign, and avoided the carpaccio at all costs.

  But the zucchini and pasta were out of this world. I think they use different flour to make the pasta. It tastes so different than the pasta you eat in America. And we made it without using a machine or anything. We did everything by hand, which was awesome. I’d done it before with my mother and father when I was growing up, but I’d forgotten how challenging it is to make it completely from scratch. First, you have to mix the dough, then you have to roll it out and cut it yourself. It
takes a long time. I remembered how my mother used to be so patient with it. It was really sentimental for me. Everything in Italy made me think of my mom. I felt really connected to her there.

  The next day I took Siggy to a praying spot with this gorgeous statute of Jesus near this church on an old historic road, off the beaten path, and we ended up praying together in front of the statue. It was very intense.

  I prayed to my mother and talked to her. I said the Our Father, because she always said that she loved that prayer. Siggy recited it with me.

  Our Father, who art in heaven,

  hallowed be thy name.

  Thy kingdom come.

  Thy will be done

  on earth as it is in heaven.

  Give us this day our daily bread,

  and forgive us our trespasses,

  as we forgive those who trespass against us;

  and lead us not into temptation,

  but deliver us from evil. Amen.

  This was something different for Siggy. She’s Jewish, so she typically says her prayers in a synagogue, but she didn’t care about that. One of the reasons why I love Siggy so much is that, when my mom was in the hospital, she asked Dolores to take her to church with her. She said, “I want to pray for Teresa’s mom.” That really meant a lot to me. The same way it did to have her there next to me in Italy, in front of the beautiful statue of Jesus.

  I was crying a lot and talking to my mom from the heart. I said, “I miss you so much. I think about you all the time. Every minute, every second, every hour of the day. And Gia, Gabriella, Milania, and Audriana miss you. We all miss you. Joey. Daddy. I wish you wouldn’t have left me so soon. I used to talk to you ten or fifteen times a day. You were my everything. I’m lost without you. I need your guidance. I need you to show me the way. I think God brought me here to be more connected to you, because I know this is where you were born.”