My life forever changed that day at 5:38 a.m

A letter written to my father's friends to notify of his passing. (originally written March 7, 2007)

This has been a very difficult letter to write which could be the reason why I have come up with excuse after excuse to not sit down and write this correspondence to all of you. My name is Charlene (Casoria) Gagnier, daughter of Charles Casoria, and I am writing to inform you of my father’s passing December 16, 2006.

Some of you may have known this as I contacted family and a few friends I knew my father had in which I had phone numbers at hand. Very few though, which is the reason why I write this letter, to make sure everyone who would want to know, is aware of his passing.

I have my father’s address book�"it is the book that he must have used for at least 40 years where names going back to when I was a child are in it, with old addresses crossed out and rewritten over. This is where he kept his Christmas card list, along with clippings of return address labels of people he corresponded with. This is all I have to work with to contact the people who knew and cared about my father. I see names on this list that are oh so familiar, but I am unsure as to whether these people still live at the addresses I have or not. So this is my attempt to try at least to make contact with people who knew my father and would want to know of his passing.

To even write this seems insane because to consider Charles Casoria “passed” is unbelievable in my mind and in my life. I am still dealing with it and dealing with estate issues, raising a young daughter, and taking care of my mother, who is in a nursing home one minute from my house (major accomplishment). My mother Lucy has had Alzheimer’s now for around 12 years. It was slow progressing so my father took on the role as caregiver for all of this time. Doing this, his own health took a back seat in his mind so I feel the warning signs of his illness were there in the beginning, but he didn’t aggressively pursue it at that time. And the one thing, if you knew my father, he did things his way so I could never force him to do things or have him take my recommendation on anything�"he made decisions for himself that he felt were the right decisions at the time. But regardless, he ended up eventually being diagnosed with Wagener’s Respiratory Disease, which when in its later stages, causes kidney failure. The kidney failure was also confirmed 4 years ago and he was on dialysis until the end. Metabolic breakdown, in which the dialysis doesn’t work as well as it should and the body keeps toxins inside which keeps the body septic is what took place at the end. The last 8 months prior to his death were devastating, especially since he was such a fighter. I really thought he would recover some as he had so many other times over the course of 4 years. All he wanted to do was take care of and be with mom, and be with his family so fighting the illness was relative to him. It was probably his strong will that kept him alive as long as it did, but there comes a time when no matter how strong your will is to battle, well, you know…

My life forever changed at 5:38 a.m. Saturday morning December 16. I learned no matter how hard I try, no matter how I threw myself into saving my father, no matter how much I loved and wanted to take care of him, my staring at a heart monitor and never moving from his side could 


not keep him alive. I couldn’t stop how it ended. And even though I am not a doctor with any knowledge to do things any better than an ICU could, I do somehow still feel failure.

Next to my daughter, I loved my parents more than anything else in this world. And if you understand Alzheimer’s, you will understand that although mom is still with us, I haven’t had a relationship with her like I did my father for many many years. Because of this, I feel like I have lost both of them.

I know my father knew many people over the years that he interacted with, worked with etc. but because of circumstance, through distance and aging, we know longer interact with people we once did when we were younger. But that doesn’t mean that the life was not as important as it was and that Charles Casoria didn’t have an impact on people over the course of his life. And it is for this reason that I write this letter so that I make the statement to the people who knew him that this world is a sadder place without Charles Casoria in it. I know I am partial to this belief because he is my father, but I tend to think that many friends and family who have loved him over the years saw the qualities that I saw he had that made him an amazing friend, co-worker, neighbor, husband, father…