“Breaking Bread: A Eulogy for Mom”
(Guardian Angels Church, Cincinnati, OH, 8/26/23)
Our mother, Angela Rose Marie Antoinette Virginia Carella Gigliotti, broke bread with a lot of people over the course of her 90 years. Happily for us, most of the bread she broke she had baked herself. Bread -- and cavatelli and cannoli and braciole and meatballs and cheese triangles and Easter crowns and struffoli at Christmas and “watermelon ice cream,” among other delicious treats – was the way she liked best to give of herself to her family, her friends, her parish, and her community.
A day on her feet in her kitchen was routine – to make dinner for her beloved husband Gilbert, her children, and her grandchildren; her friends in the Gourmet Group; the Genesis folk; her two granddaughter-roommates; the parish priests; or simply to ensure that her freezers were filled and ready for that all-too-frequent case when one just may need a spare lasagna.
She had learned to cook at the elbow of her mother and her aunts – bringing the recipes of Acquaviva delle Fonti, just outside of Bari, Italy, to what, I’m sure to a Brooklyn girl, seemed a wilderness in Ohio. But she was a very successful gastronomic missionary: Her eldest son, Michael (God rest his soul), cooked like her. Her daughter, Frances, cooks like her. Her youngest, Anthony, cooks like her. I alone failed her (with sincere apologies to my family). And she broke bread at all our homes – coming for those occasions she loved best: Baptisms, First Communions, Confirmations, and graduations.
Breaking bread, of course, implies community, a group of people who gather to share their love -- and their faith -- for breaking bread has been a fundamental, indeed sacramental, practice in the Church at least since Jesus fed the five thousand. And the practice of breaking bread (or, in New Testament Greek, η κλάσισ του άρτου) continued. In Acts 2:42, for example, it is written “And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” So, our mother’s long-time service here at Guardian Angels as a devout and devoted Eucharistic minister, not to mention as the manager of the school cafeteria, was, as they say nowadays, very “on-brand.”
But, as fate would have it, Rose Marie would be called to be even more than a loving daughter, sister, wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, friend, and chef who could cook up a storm. Her role as the primary caregiver to our father, after his MS diagnosis, would drive her to recognize the need for a “respite companion ministry,” the formation of which was a major logistical undertaking. A daunting task, yes, but it brought relief both to those who needed care and those who required at least a brief pause from such an unrelenting burden. And, as Mom intended, the caregivers brought community to those most in need of it – and thus figuratively, and often literally, they broke bread together.
Six years ago, our mother suffered a stroke that would deny her the joy of cooking for us all. She still enjoyed breaking bread with each of us and did so; her hands simply could no longer knead, fold, bake, and break it.
Now, I may not be a cook, but I ask your indulgence to allow me to do very briefly what I, a literature professor, do best: an apt literary reference.
In his 1965 book Cosmicomics, Italo Calvino offers a series of short stories explaining a variety of scientific theories. In my favorite, entitled “All at One Point,” he writes of the Big Bang, that “moment when all the universe’s matter was concentrated in a single point, before it began to expand in space” (43). Calvino wonderfully imagines the Big Bang occurring when the maternal Mrs. Ph(i)Nk° says to all the others who were packed together “like sardines” (43) with her:
“…how I’d like to make some noodles for you boys!” (46)
At that moment, the concentrated energy necessary to imagine the space it would take for Mrs. Ph(i)Nk°’s “arms…white and shiny with oil up to the elbows” (46) to roll out the dough with a rolling pin – not to mention the space required for the sun, the sky, the water, and the fields to grow the wheat for the flour – all this explodes the spot they have shared and sends them hurtling “to the four corners of the universe” (47). Calvino makes clear, however, the explosive force was not simply Mrs. Ph(i)Nk°’s imagination, but also, and far more importantly, her “generous impulse” and her “true outburst of…love.”
We all are gathered here today because of the “generous impulse” and “true outburst of love” that Rose Marie Gigliotti shared with each of us. And, I’m sure, her only wish would be that, when we leave here and scatter to our various corners of the universe, we demonstrate that same love, generosity, and faith each time we break bread with another.
Mom, we miss you. We love you. Please make some struffoli for Dad and Mike!
Works Cited
Calvino, Italo. Cosmicomics. Trans. by William Weaver. San Diego: Harvest/HBJ, 1968.
May, Herbert and Bruce Metzger, eds. The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha. Revised Standard Edition. New York: Oxford UP, 1977.
Thayer, Joseph H. Thayer’s Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1977.
