And another one
Feb. 12th, 2007 07:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lauradi7dwI learned this morning that Patri Pugliese died yesterday at about 5 PM, while out on a walk. Coincidentally, I was on my way home from a Regency tea dance at the time, at which he had been
mentioned fondly. It was sponsored by a group that he had helped found. Before the diagnosis last fall of terminal liver cancer, he and his wife had been scheduled to be teaching dance in Vienna this week, but life (and in this case death) intervened. We were never close, but I've known him since about 1978, seeing him occasionally throughout.
I was just going to add a link to a post from October, but upon searching I was startled to see that I never actually wrote it. (is that coherent grammatically or in any other way?)
When he started making his diagnosis public, consensus was that instead of waiting until he died, the time to hang around eating and telling stories was while he was alive. The event was a gathering of people from near and far, some of whom we hadn't seen for ages. A room was set aside
for people to tell stories, and for Patri to tell others, and they were all recorded. He was gray and thin but otherwise seemed well at the time (similar to my recollections of the way Henry Brugsch was with liver cancer)and was gracious and funny. There was a lot more laughter than tears. I didn't cry until the next day, when trying to recount it to people at church.
It struck many of us at the time that this was the ideal way to schedule such a gathering. I thought of the Carter Family song that has the chorus
Give me the roses while I live
Trying to cheer me on.
Useless are flowers that you give
after the soul is gone.
There will be a memorial service for Patri, but the one that counts most has already happened.
mentioned fondly. It was sponsored by a group that he had helped found. Before the diagnosis last fall of terminal liver cancer, he and his wife had been scheduled to be teaching dance in Vienna this week, but life (and in this case death) intervened. We were never close, but I've known him since about 1978, seeing him occasionally throughout.
I was just going to add a link to a post from October, but upon searching I was startled to see that I never actually wrote it. (is that coherent grammatically or in any other way?)
When he started making his diagnosis public, consensus was that instead of waiting until he died, the time to hang around eating and telling stories was while he was alive. The event was a gathering of people from near and far, some of whom we hadn't seen for ages. A room was set aside
for people to tell stories, and for Patri to tell others, and they were all recorded. He was gray and thin but otherwise seemed well at the time (similar to my recollections of the way Henry Brugsch was with liver cancer)and was gracious and funny. There was a lot more laughter than tears. I didn't cry until the next day, when trying to recount it to people at church.
It struck many of us at the time that this was the ideal way to schedule such a gathering. I thought of the Carter Family song that has the chorus
Give me the roses while I live
Trying to cheer me on.
Useless are flowers that you give
after the soul is gone.
There will be a memorial service for Patri, but the one that counts most has already happened.
