Mrs. Maria Torto Valentini

Maria Torto Valentini was born in Rapino, Italy on July 27, 1949 to Andrea and Almerinda Torto. With her family by her side, Maria peacefully went to the Lord on October 20, 2012 at her residence in Seal Beach, CA. She was predeceased by her father: Andrea Torto and her brother: Giuseppe Torto. She is survived by her husband: Dr. Daniel Louis Valentini and their children: Giuseppe Andrea Valentini, Daniela Gina Valentini Nocerino & Diana Maria Valentini. She is also survived by her mother: Almerinda Amoroso Torto and her siblings: Lorenzo Torto, Malvina Torto , Andrew Torto.   So what is Maria's essence? A Eulogy by Daniel Valentini The leaves are falling, falling as if from far up, as if orchards were dying high in space. Each leaf falls as if it were motioning "no." And tonight the heavy earth is falling away from all other stars in the loneliness. We're all falling. This hand here is falling. And look at the other one. It's in them all. And yet there is Someone, whose hands infinitely calm, holding up all this falling In the latter years of our marriage I likened her  to Pollyanna which Disney made into a movie.  Pollyanna was a young orphan who was sent up to New England to live with her rich  but disciplinarian Aunt Polly. Pollyanna's approach in life centered on  optimism.  No matter how difficult or bleak the situation some light of optimism could be extracted from the situation. In a very similar way when Maria and I would be going anywhere and we encountered the ubiquitous traffic of a large city the event could upset me but she would say to me hundreds of times over the span of our sweet life together to enjoy the journey and to calm my nerves would at times invite me for a rosary while I drove.   That is one of the distilled essence of my bride Maria who was an amalgam of her father Andrea Torto's struggle for survival during an ill prepared war which saw his near starvation in Maria's parlance  La Miseria and subsequently a loss of his entire family during and after the war coupled with Almerinda, as a young maiden,  whose charism was given an extraordinary abundance of innocence, joy  and the refined diamond for her love for Jesus. All these factors lay the basic ingredients  in the creation of a most extraordinary girl who was brought here nearly 10 years of age to this great land. She never had an unkind word especially to someone on the ropes. Who here can challenge this fact that she always looked at the positive in things?    Born in relative poverty which due to the innate goodness of their ancient  land brought no shame since there was the understanding that hard work, when available, would be done with joy and  reckless aplomb comingled with a life of honesty, kindness, and no two facededness. When there was the opportunity a generosity for others it was heaped upon even the  unsuspecting recipient. This, from my reckoning, is a universal character of the entire Torto clan distilled  from the great character of Don Andrea. They actually more resembled a classic American family of the era of the pioneers who braved their wagons over the Rockies and the Sierra Nevadas. They had the sinew to be rugged individuals. If they had landed out west in place of Queens then Andrea would have made a fortune producing wine and prosciutto in the San Joaquin Valley. He loved his visit in Stockton where we lived for 2 years of my training.  Maria,  the eldest sib, and in retrospect by today's standards,  was given far too many tasks at a tender age to help minister to her burgeoning family and to her comune of Rapino. Maria related to me that her mother sent her off at a young  age to visit friends who were undergoing the acute loss as we are now experiencing.   She  would be present in prayer in vigil with the weeping family. The finality of Death was never  saccharinized nor was its long reach never too distant as witnessed by the oft tolling  bells from the towers of San Lorenzo, San Giovanni, Madonna di Carpineta, Santa Rita or Madonna di Libera. Most likely folks in those days died from simple infections which culled the population until the advent of antibiotics. Due to the shadow of Death being so close to all souls the notion of distancing themselves from the Sacraments was not only foolhardy it caused psychic pain. This young Maria obediently and joyously performed this  spiritual work of mercy and much later after having the kids  brought the Holy Eucharist to the in patients in our local community hospital and to shut ins. She even coaxed priests to come out and see these shut ins whose souls had not had a confession in 50 years. She did these works up until about 12 months before her own final crisis but  then she would then send out money for a  beleaguered family  who lost a young adult son even though she could no longer physically muster the strength to attend the funeral Mass... Maria also attracted disturbed souls so when she did a year or so at the State Mental Hospital to help with our  tuitions she was a diamond amongst some very cruel psych techs. All the patients there came to know and love her. She even bought them cigarettes to calm their nerves. So again her essence was her transparent heart and soul which even a disturbed patient could easily spot. She took a few to the Mass on the hospital grounds. She admonished them not to receive the Eucharist unlesss they had gone to Confession. She saw the face of Christ in all especially in non believers for many a time I caught her at some of my symposia during lunch time the agnostics and atheists professors would sit attentively to her knowledge of Jesus and the Old Testament. She especially saw the good in the Jews who today have drifted away from their book. Her teaching became richer as she studied the Bible in our parish.    Due to the austerity and yet the simplicity of  life on the slopes of the eastern Apennines in post WW II Italy she had no toys but would need to  invent them with thread, broken buttons and discarded cloth. But the time to play was given out parsimoniously by her saintly mother and Maria was given some of the burden of  responsibilities for watching her younger sibs and would tote water by balancing the jug on her head. Spoiled she was not. You can even see some signs of it in a video taken back in 1958 when she is seen trying to corral Larry from running off while she is engaged in games with her childhood friends.   As we said she was born into poverty but that word carried no particular shame provided one worked hard and honestly. This characteristic Don Andrea taught his family and to never shirk from any duty big or small.  When she did some work she did it with superb execution worthy of a world class violinist.  I had some difficulty in appreciating this attribute since the task would absorb her. Case in point: wrapping a gift for some child's birthday or ironing a shirt would entail the rubrics bordering on a sacrament...The fastidious pursuit of perfection in the little things was something in a mass produced society was quite novel to me.  I did not appreciate it initially which is a sad reflection on the differences between the two coasts.  The left coast with its clement weather breeds a solipsistic narcissism which does not engender the sacrificing humanity of the right coast with its snow, rain and humidity.  Malvina, too, I oft times cited  carried this genetic trait to  nearly a fault.   I move forward a bit for a poignant example- whilst we were awaiting the sacramental nuptial knots I  noted as an intern at Booth Memorial in Flushing that the nursing staff seemed to always give  her the most challenging  patients to manage and what we saw also was the indolent lazziness of the nursing aids assigned to assist Maria. The latter would eclipse their duties undoubtedly since they could see Maria's sole fault was she could not inspire the unmotivated to work for an honest day's salary. Since she was far better at doing the task she did it herself and never reported the nursing aids. She did not tell me about this issue till months later.  This lax work attitude by her co workers under her was in mortal conflict  with the dogma Don Andrea steeped my bride in... Laziness was  heretical and could not peacefully co exist in Don Andrea's universe. So laziness and shoddy workmanship must be shunned and burned as if Savonarola were torching an evil book.   Worse yet the cruel threesome of nursing staff above her spotted a selfless conscientious worker or better stated,  sucker,  and sadistically heaped more duties upon her lithe frame of 108 lbs while some of those same nurses were wasting time at work calling friends on the hospital phone failing to help Maria move large patients of my size and dimensions. This propensity to not fight back over others came back to haunt her when she ran the school nursing program at our kids' Catholic grammar school. Asking other students' mothers to pitch in there always seemed to be a couple of stragglers  who could duck the responsibilities so Maria would work their shift too. The one time she challenged a mother the woman accused her of racism.   I met my bride sometime in the late  autumn of 1977. I was called to the respiratory ICU on the 7 th floor at Booth Memorial probably around 11PM near the end of a afternoon shift to see a sick patient on a ventilator. The nursing and doctor work area was a shared space with the surgical nursing floor where Maria was a full time RN working the shift from 3 PM to midnight.  All the desks were taken  since the nurses were absorbed in their charting duties. A single  small table that could only accommodate two compliant small framed nurses or one oversized  California bodysurfing redhead was available. She was seated at that table alone and quite absorbed diligently writing her notes on patient care. I needed some space to formulate a clinical impression on a patient that was hitting  the skids.  She looked up at me and could see I was a bit preoccupied. She respected doctors having worked for a medical director in Manhattan as his sole secretary and factotum.  She readily made me some space and she started writing her notes on her lap. I spotted her innate grace immediately and commented on her last name as being Italian in origin.    I cut my teeth at my father's side at his table  and his perverse aura of superiority over southern Italians a kind of atavistic replay of Greek city state intrigue with its  internecine warfare. Having been in New York only a year I quickly learnt all the Italian American folk were nearly 100 % from areas south of Florence. . My father used to poke fun when he would hear  southern Italians' inability to speak proper Toscano saying they sounded like hillbillies. He had an exquisite  education fully  steeped in the school of   liceo classico where he studied under priests the classical Greek, the Latin and French to wit  the latter which saved his life during the war. He fully believed in his intimidating aura of his intellectual rigor. So there I was beholding to  a selfless nurse who made a work space for me. A girl of unparalleled beauty and grace and all I could say to her was are you of Italian lineage? She said "yes " and then I said "I bet you can't speak proper Italian". So  out of my mouth was an untimely prejudiced comment from another person. On reflection I believe the underlying reason probably was a feeling that she was not attracted to me since I perceived I was unattractive being pimply and redheaded. But the finest fruit  of the Abruzzo born in the refined  air  in  the shadow of the Maiela fired back several phrases of rapid fire impeccable  Toscano all with those delightful  playful blue eyes . This teasing but soft rejoinder that banished the pimply redheaded intern lovingly into the distant quadrants of the cosmos. She more than held her ground for took a large important territory of my heart to completely capture my  fancy and fantasy.  I was her becoming her prisoner. But I wanted far more of this stunningly beautiful young lady.    A few weeks  of no contact ensued save for a near collision in the hospital stairways  just after her shift ended. I was  bolting down the stairs hell bent on saving the world from disease or maybe just starting and iv or to do a late night admission. In those days I could easily take two stairs downhill at a time.  I nearly ran her over and it was obvious she was also going out for her hair  was no longer tied back and that hair had enticing  waves  and she was clothed  in civilian garb and  dressed to kill.  It was just past  midnight and I had to run to other floors but she was absolutely breath taking to behold. I asked in a most interested voice where would she be going dressed up like that so late at night?  "Studio 54"she said  of which a cretin yahoo West Coaster cloistered in a 90 hour a week job like mine had no idea where that was since I had never stepped into any disco in my entire life. But I could not stop staring at her since she was, you know, absolutely beautiful. She was so small and delicate. I wanted to hug her but we were not even formally introduced other than a few weeks earlier I had said my unfiltered stupid comments masquerading my sense of insecurity.   Then a few days later something special happened by a would be cupid male respiratory therapist. This guy Abdul  and I, when not deluged with work,  would always chat it up late  till midnight talking basketball or what have you up till Abdul left for home.  Apparently he was also,  at times,chatting it up with Maria when she was not being overwhelmed by the troika of witching supervisors who took delight in their schadenfreunde  of seeing her suffer with overwork.  He told me of a dyanamic brunette whirlwind  named Maria Torto who wished to get to know me better. Immediately a hologram image of  her face in the stairwell flashed in front of my eyes. He sensed the interest and maybe my self-effacing disbelief at such good news. She apparently sensed I was very interested in her so she took the liberty of having Abdul carry her phone number along.  I called once my 36 hour shift was over which was  the following afternoon. Back then it was quite common for the interns to remain in the hospital working 80 to 90 hours a week so evenings after call ran on pure adrenaline having been up nearly a day and a half. I called her and she was so sweet and we agreed on a date that week.   On the first date sometime in late November 1977  I arrived shortly after Maria's supper was finished with her family. I was not adequately dressed for New York fall clime in those days having cut my teeth on perfect weather in LA which spawns great jocks but little intelligence.  I had a London Fog jacket with the cheap lining which I had been using since age 16. It barely kept  the elements from killing me. The Torto  home felt so cozy and inviting.  I met her brothers who shrugged their shoulders in disinterest and off they went down to the basement where they bivouacked listening to disco music.  But Maria's sister Malvina was also present and a far more curious type who sat very close to me with her father to my right and the mother smiling excitedly at my visit was circulating about with her chores.  Maria sat opposite me. I communicated in pidgin Italian mixed with a patois of Spanish. The girls readily filled in the translation in an Italian which I had never heard before in my entire life-- words vaguely familiar but with amputated endings and a total lack of the nasal tone of the Veronese which was what I was used to hearing. After a few moments of this I got the distinct impression Malvina was the designated praetorian guard for her sister or maybe she was doing a post graduate study  in anthropology and wanted to investigate with far more questions on  a  live specimen of Homo sapiens sub species californicus. I whimsically began thinking that if I did not hit it off with Maria that her inquisitive sister of equal resplendent pulchritude,   beauty and grace would make a most excellent and equal alternative.   Maria.'s command of the king's English for an immigrant was well measured being bowdlerized and sanitized  akin to my voice which she later confessed was from mastering Pitman short hand which was formulated from a proper British English accent.  Her sibs had very heavy new York accents.   After a most delightful 30 minute Inquisition which  ensued I felt inclined to stay rather than go to a movie. I could see Maria was enormously pleased that I felt at total ease with my future in laws. But Maria signaled it was time to go the movies at the Utopia to see the just releasedSaturday Night Fever.  After the movie and a recall of our chance encounter in the stairwell at work I realized Maria's organic love for dance and in fact for all the arts. I assiduously avoided how to dance way back in the 60's. Back then  I was overjoyed and relieved when dancing deteriorated to where the man no longer needed to hold the woman thus absolving the man of injuring the lady with his clumsy feet.   After the movie I discovered how affectionate this child of the province of Chieti was. I was not used to having a woman in New York heap such attention on me with her sweetness and many questions and concerns about my life,  my lack of proper winter clothing and the abysmal  hunter gatherer diet I had adapted to during the lean years of medical school and internship... Those days I had a very low self esteem believing red heads were truly ugly.  I learned  later once married that she found me to be a hunk but that she was concerned  on the sad state of my sartorial disorder when I had presented myself to her family on the first date.   Later that night before I left her home for my flat in Forest Hills I asked her for another date. I do recall sitting on Nonna's lovely couch which had plastic protective wrapping on it which I found most unusual.       A few nights later we went on another date and another movie upon entering their lovely home I noted the couch no longer sported  its hydrocarbon covering.  After the movie I confess with some shame we smooched passionately on that couch well past midnight.. That was so divine.   I asked again that night for another date but she said I would have to wait a week for her return from a vacation to the glorious Bahamas. It was  a trip she had planned with some girl friends many months earlier. This was in the first week of  December 1977.   While she was gone on her vacation I learnt I had been accepted at Stockton's San Joaquin General Hospital to complete my final two years of internal medicine training commencing in July 1978.. My desire was to return to Southern California would be realized since Stockton was just  4  hours and 45 minutes  north at 80 mph on I 5.   I received three progressively passionate  postcards from her during her brief sojourn in the tropics. She complained in one of the missives that she did not have the heart to dance down there for she had left her heart elsewhere. Having digested that needless to say I was promptly there at La Guardia on  December 11  1977 on Sunday morning to pick her up. Her blue eyes were transcendent vibrant  with an incandescence and a healthy radiance brought out by a contrasting tan which covered the  dour pale look New Yorkers tend to have by that time of the year.  Indeed she was a  jewel.   I was totally captivated   I was her happy prisoner.   A few nights after her return from her vacation I was seated in Almerinda's kitchen alone with Maria. She was fixin' to fatten me up like a goose from Strasbourg  with two large 2 feet by 1 foot cooking platters of superb jumbo shrimp. The quality of the catch was world class equal to those that I used to eat down in Guaymas en route to medical school where the shrimp had just been caught in the Mar de Cortez.  I  easily ate one platter but managed to only make it through a third of the second platter.  She clearly did not underestimate my capacity.  What I could palpably sense was this young maiden's instincts were solely commited  to my well being. Such physical and emotional tenderness and an uncanny attention to detail in all things including serving me. This was  so reassuring.  I was now completely in her thrall.    After the feast I  informed her of my new assignment to start the final two years of training  6 months hence  in California. I  mentioned to her that letter writing was not one of my strong suits and that I would detest a cross country romance. I thought to myself that I was so darn in love with her in such a short time but  I was afraid some CroMagnon would come and swoop her up and she would be gone from my life.  A short period of silence ensued and then she declared somewhat timidly in  her  softest voice  with the sound of trying to make a resolution to the geographical conundrum:  "what about marriage?"   Up to that point all my blood was quite happily being physiologically recruited  to my GI tract for digestion of her superb meal but upon hearing  her honest question immediately caused a massive surge of  flow to my lungs where I responded  in a speed  faster than a contestant on Jeopardy. I said in a most  timid fashion since I was in total awe of her beauty and honestly felt myself to be unattractive and unworthy of her: "Would you? With me?"   She paused a few seconds not to hold me in suspense but just to gather the necessary breath and she gave me her eternal assent:  "Yes"  Thus started an autumnal whirlwind romance with a proposal in less than a month of meeting followed by a May wedding and a month later a huge move  out west. All here will readily attest that the marriage was arranged by God with its multiple ecstasies of life bearing grace with 3 kids and a sole agony which Maria fully conquered with spiritual grace. The dross of the unimportant things in life were incinerated away in the crucible as a by product of an untimely illness with its associated  uncertainties but what remained were the rudiments and  non negotiables of filial, fraternal and matrimonial love, the latter even when ill,  commitment, generosity, diligence, honesty, transparency, attention to detail, kindness, prodigal with her time for others in need, trust in her doctors and a growing Faith that God the Father knows best because those essences just cited were the only things to be concerned with.   I cannot fight away the tears for they are not solely from pain which dwarfs anything I have ever experienced including a fractured pelvis sustained at considerable speed on my bike. No, these  tears are also  for joy and the privilege that God saw to it that I, an unworthy vessel,  was and still is being allowed to hold the dulcent memory of one of his newly appointed angels who is now  witnessing the Beatific Vision.  I am told by many clergy that both she and God  are pining for my arrival some day.   I don't expect to get over this change of venue from my Maru. I have been calling several of you by phone in somewhat quiet desperation to hear your voices for in those voices reside some of her elan vital and essence which I must  distill and consume. After a 3 week hiatus of not having any dreams of her I have been now glimpsing her briefly in the fleeting contrails and vapors of my dreams. One time I spied her  in the communion line with me. Little things at home such as how she set up the figurines on a bureau immediately bring a romantic  recall of our 34 years together.   You know we hardly fought probably less than 10 times I would wager and I always would lose but at night when she was still upset my furtive passing my foot near hers while my pretending to be fast asleep would be  rewarded with earthly bliss. She was the paradigm of an ideal wife.   I have, through our daughter Diana's suggestions,  begun to realize that Maru is merely just beyond our grasp. It is a mere inconvenience. She is quite apt to communicate but that it will take a different strategy to open the avenue of communication. I have been striving to making it to daily 6 AM Mass and the Rosary along with daily visits to the gravesite.  She now resides in the confines of Heaven but sees each one of us under the prism of  a freed soul from the Church Militant and the Church Suffering.    The Bread of Life has given me the strength in a most quiet way to trust in Him and that one day we will be fully reunited in a way more akin to the manner God wanted us to love in Eternity. To some degree we reached that threshold of a new kind of love in her last days. She reversed roles and I was serving her. It was a great honor and I was so fortunate to be at the right age where the career that I had could take a back seat to doing what was most important. In her last written words for me she wrote back in May: "Dad, thank you for being the wonderful hard - working husband and provider. I'm sorry I had to leave; I would have preferred having spent the best years of our lives together and closer falling in love like a silly teenager all over again. I love you and rejoice for me.    I pray constantly  to the Holy Spirit to keep my soul a worthy and  spotless vessel for our repatriation. Let us close with some optimism from Rainer Maria Rilke again: The leaves are falling, falling as if from far up, as if orchards were dying high in space. Each leaf falls as if it were motioning "no." And tonight the heavy earth is falling away from all other stars in the loneliness. We're all falling. This hand here is falling. And look at the other one. It's in them all. And yet there is Someone, whose hands infinitely calm, holding up all this falling Eulogy delivered at a memorial Mass for Maria Torto Valentini on November 24, 2012 at Holy Family Roman Catholic Church in Fresh Meadows, Queens, NYC         Â