*Salvatore*, la nostra stella*

Se esprimi un desiderio è perché vedi cadere una stella, se vedi cadere una stella e perché stai guardando il cielo
e se guardi il cielo è perché credi ancora in qualcosa. - Bob Marley

If you make a wish, it's because you see a falling star
If you see a falling star it's because you're watching the sky
And if you're watching the sky
it's because you still believe in something. - Bob Marley

Salvatore's first book was not, infact, the Dolphin Book. While we were still living in Italy, and I was about 5 months pregnant, I found a sweet, small book in a museum store called "Stelle". It was a book written by a Neapolitan artist that described the stars to children. I tucked it inside our luggage and one day, at 7 months, while still staying at my mother's house in Berkeley, it popped out. I had never shown it to Mimmo before that night "You must read the Stars book to Salvatore tonight. He needs to hear his papa read him a bedtime story in italiano,".

Mimmo read to him for the first time. Hearing his deep gentle voice and his asides to Salvatore as he read on "Oh, Salvatore, if you could only see this star right now...How beautiful!," and "Did you know this? Papa didn't know this. This book is very interesting, Salvatore,". That very special night, I got the pleasure of witnessing Mimmo become a papa.

Fast forward to a couple of months later. We are in the NICU at Children's Hospital and Mimmo is reading "Stelle" to Salvatore once more. This time we are all, in fact, it seems in outerspace. Salvatore is hooked up to all these machines, "my rocket boy" as I called him. And, as we read to him, we'd already heard the devastating news from our family meeting. There is no brain activity. And, that will never change. He's breathing only because of the machines. And, even though he could wrap his fingers around my finger, it's just "brain stem function" the Drs., the nurses, & my family tell me. Mimmo and I say that we need time to be with our son. This is our time.

Mimmo gets to the part about the Mayans in the book:

I Maya

Nell'America centrale,
circa mille anni fa,
un antico popolo contemplava il cielo da citta
consruite come veri e propri osservatori astronomici.
I Maya credevano che dopo la morte
tutti sarebbero rinati sotto forma
di stelle!

The Mayans

In Central America,
around 1000 years ago,
an ancient people contemplated the sky from
their city where they'd built real astronomical observatories.
The Mayans believed that after death
everyone would be reborn in the form
of a star!

"And, that's what papa hopes that you will be, Salvatore. A star. Shining brightly. That we can look to at night and you will guide us,"

The next day (or the day after or the day after that...it's all such a blur), Mimmo & I woke up to plan our son's release from the machines. We wanted him to be outdoors, not in that stuffy hospital room anymore. We wanted to say a few words, but we didn't want a priest there. We wanted Alice to play her guitar and sing the beautiful song that she sang to Salvatore when she visited him at the NICU. We wanted Vega to read the part in the Stelle book in Italiano and Leila to read the translation in English. Jen had left her "Life Prayers" book and earmarked a few passages for us. I was so turned off by "God" or religion at this point, but I read one of the dog-eared passages and it seemed something that Salvatore could have said himself:

When I die if you need to weep
Cry for your brother or sister
Walking the street beside you
And when you need me put your arms around anyone
And give them what you need to give me.

I want to leave you something
Something better than words or sounds.

Look for me in the people I've known or loved
And if you cannot give me away
At least let me live in your eyes and not in your mind.

You can love me most by letting hands touch hands
By letting bodies touch bodies
And by letting go of children that need to be free.

Love doesn't die, people do
So when all that's left of me is love
Give me away

-Anonymous

We were planning our son's death. We were planning his release. We were planning a ceremony as we felt it was a rite needed to be marked in the most special and gentle of ways. There was only one quote that seemed to be missing...

When we went to the island of Procida one time, I had picked up a sugar packet from the bar near the port. When I turned it over, there was this quote by Bob Marley. I read it to Mimmo and we both loved it. I had tucked it away in my wallet all this time. A few days before Salvatore was born, my wallet was stolen. Mimmo and I tried with all our might to remember, piece together the quote. "Let's call the bar on Procida," Antonio, Mimmo's brother suggested. So, there we were, calling Italy to try to find a quote by Bob Marley (in Italian!) on a sugar packet to read to our son as we took him off of life support. The bar was closed for the season.

Then, like a lightbulb going off in my head, I was like DUH, the internet. We found the quote. It's strange because with all the googling I did in its many different forms, I could never find this quote in English. I don't know if it's from a song, I don't know if it's something he said in an interview, but it became the last words that we said to Salvatore before we let him go...

Because, besides the fact that he will always be our star, we still (even through all of this) want so much to believe in something.