Staci

Death struck down another good one last week. Staci Ann Pepitone, a lovely young woman of 43. Cancer. Her mom, Brenda, is an English department colleague of mine from Wayne High School. We’re both retired now, but Brenda and I have been buddies for years.

Staci took a job at Louisiana State University back in the mid-90s working with kids at the student union, using skills honed at her prior gig at Wright State. She later moved into the finance and administration office at LSU, but often still found herself working with students. Nine former student body presidents and four vice-presidents made it back to Baton Rouge to celebrate Staci’s life and career at her memorial on Tuesday, March 16. That statistic alone, I suspect, speaks reams about her positive impact on students and student life at LSU.

Lots of tears were shed that day as you might imagine. Lots of good memories retold. Quite a bit of laughter. A real N’awlins jazz funeral procession led the way. Such a celebration of a life!

For me, the most hopeful yet painful part was the dedication of Staci’s Southern live oak on the campus Parade Ground. For those of us Buckeyes who don’t know the LSU campus, the Parade Ground is a large green common area where students play frisbee, study under the sun on blankets, and engender that deep Tiger love for LSU. It was a place where Staci helped stage many student events.

LSU endows the Southern live oaks on campus as a way to preserve and protect these beautiful People of nature. All of the oaks surrounding the Parade Ground had been endowed over the years, save one. That one now will bear the memory of Staci Pepitone.

I think I had such a hard time at the dedication partly because I think remembering a daughter, friend, and colleague with another living being is a poignant practice. I hope my family can find a good place to plant, or dedicate, a tree to my memory when the time comes.

But more than that, I think, as the event directly following the memorial mass, Staci’s oak dedication brought her mother one step closer to saying her final goodbye.

I just don’t know how a parent can bear to bury a child. Brenda and I talked about this a month or so ago over lunch. With two grown daughters of my own, three grandkids, and three step-grandgirls, I wonder how I would deal with what Brenda now must. Children bury parents, not the other way around. It is the kids who are to grow up and away, giving moms and dads stories to crow about with friends over dinner. Staci was in mid-career and had so much more to offer. LSU and the world can now only wonder what those things would have been. And Brenda is left to live her life without her daughter and confidant.

I know Staci’s memory will go on in the presence of the tree and in the hearts of those who knew and loved her. But at the end of the day, a mother has been deprived of her own pride and joy long before the time she thought she had. I can’t imagine how that feels.

My heart goes out to you, Brenda. Know you are loved.

Today’s elder idea: Be kind. For everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.

Staci’s mantra