Birthday Buddy

The phone rang. It was Pat Kohler, a nice woman, in her 60s, who lived down the street. She wanted to talk to her friend, Joyce Intorelli, at the time 65 years old and an avid smoker with short black hair, a great smile and one of those voices that just hearing it could make the whole day better. The Black Pine Drive gals would call each other on the phone about two to three times a week. This call would end a little differently.

It was a typical conversation: How are the kids? How’s watching your sister’s dog going? How was Atlantic City this weekend? Hello…..Hello…..Joyce? Joyce?

Kohler called back thinking maybe the connection went bad. Ring…Ring…Ring…Ring….Ring….Ring…. No answer, so she called again and after the first ring it was Joyce Intorelli’s daughter, Laura Intorelli, who answered the phone and said in a panic, “Pat my mom won’t get up off the floor! Her eyes are closed!” Kohler immediately called 911 and went running up the street to see what was wrong. After about three minutes of Joyce Intorelli not breathing she regained consciousness.

Laura Intorelli was the youngest of three daughters; and because of her condition, she had to live by law with another guardian. Laura Intorelli was born with her brain outside of her head, which doctors told Joyce Intorelli it was caused by smoking while being pregnant. This was not a known cause before her daughter was born, and the surgeon put a metal plate that holds her daughter’s brain place.

Laura Intorelli was known by everyone in the neighborhood and she could have a conversation with anyone about anything. She loved going for walks around the block or sometimes in the park behind her house, always before dinner time. She would come home, eat and then watch her two favorite shows, “Deal or No Deal” and “Family Feud.”

During the day she enjoyed watching old television series but not as much as she loved standing outside. While standing right in front of the car in the driveway she would wave to the people who drove up and down the street.

Laura Intorelli had a way about her that by seeing her it made people’s day because she was never seen without a smile – except for three horrible days that took place in her life, and this was one of them.

The ambulance came and rushed Joyce Intorelli to the hospital as fast as they could where she had to have an emergency quadruple bypass surgery on her heart. When she had fainted in her home during that phone call, she had heart failure where she was dead during those three minutes she was lying on the floor, doctors told her.

Joyce Intorelli smoked three to four packs of cigarettes a day for almost 50 years and it finally caught up to her. The ventricles to her heart had just stopped working for those three minutes. With her daughter outside, had she not been on the phone with Kohler calling back multiple times until finally someone answered the phone, she would have more than likely died before an ambulance would have had a chance to get there.

Once Joyce Intorelli was able to understand and function again after her surgery she got some more bad news from the doctor. It was news that changed the rest of her life. While they had her opened up, the surgeon found lung cancer.

When Joyce Intorelli returned home, after a long recovery, her children let her decide for herself whether she was going to quit smoking or continue. She was just in South Carolina visiting some relatives and bought three cartons of cigarettes because it was half the amount that it would cost to buy them in New Jersey.

She walked through her front door for the first time in about three months and the first thing she said was, “Throw them all away, I never want to see them again,” out of pure disgust.

When she was able to walk away from something that had basically controlled her life to this point, there was a chance that she could beat her cancer. It gave her children- and myself- hope.

I was her next-door neighbor, her best friend, she would treat me like one of her own but most of all we shared the same birthday, June 16th. She would call me her “Birthday Buddy.”

Laura Intorelli, Joyce Intorelli and her husband Tony Intorelli, would watch me from time to time while I was growing up. Tony Intorelli would always come out to yell at me when I would play basketball, “who’s making all that noise over there!” He passed away when I was 12, another day where Laura Intorelli did not have a smile on her face.

Joyce Intorelli would tell people all kinds of stories about me- some funny ones, like how when I was 4 I would run to the fence when I saw her outside and wait for her to bring me on her lawn just so I could play in her dirt. She would always tell her friends I never wanted to play in my own dirt, only hers. Then some sad ones, like my reaction to when my brother died when he was 28. I was 9. From all the different memories we shared, her favorite story to tell was how she found out that I was her “Birthday Buddy.”

My parents had no idea it was her birthday when I was born and Tony Intorelli was always the type of person for humorous sarcasm, so when he said today’s my wife’s birthday, my parents didn’t believe him. Then, when they went inside and all her children were there celebrating her birthday, they realized he was telling the truth.

From the first time she came home with cancer I was devastated. I did not go over more than once a week for the first three years of her battle because my parents did not want me to see her going through chemotherapy and all the agonizing pain that went along with it.

When I turned 16, she turned 70, the cancer had spread to her stomach, she had breast cancer and the worst part was she had a tumor growing inside her brain. I began going there every day after school. I would help her with anything she needed done, but most of all, I gave her my company.

At this point there was no chance of her beating it but she put up a great fight.

Her oldest daughter Lucille Kearns said, “I would of died within the six months the doctor gave me, but that was not how my mom functioned. She was a fighter.”

Her living room where she spent the majority of her time had a fireplace, a television, a couch, a bathroom and her chair.

She always sat there with a sock that she filled with rice. She would microwave the sock and then place it on her stomach. The rice would take some of the pain away from what she was feeling.

She would wear a bandana around her head so she wouldn’t look as bald, even though Laura Intorelli and I were usually the only ones there and never cared what she looked like.

When Joyce Intorelli was feeling up to it we would play a game called Rummikub with her daughter. Joyce Intorelli had a long oxygen tube that ran around the entire house on hooks that were on the wall plugged into the tank so no one could trip over them. She would use the oxygen on and off throughout the day.

As the days passed she began to grow weaker to the point where she needed care 24 hours a day. She had multiple aides and a lady that stayed with her at night during the week. I would stay on Saturday and one of her two daughters usually stayed on Sunday. She was a restless sleeper and only slept maybe two to three hours at a time until 6 a.m.

After about six months of this kind of care she was taken to the Intensive Care Unit in St. Francis hospital, Trenton, New Jersey. While she was there, she would introduce everyone to me, as usual, as her “Birthday Buddy” and I would smile, but somehow she knew something was wrong.

It was the first and only time in my life anyone ever asked me this question: “Are you embarrassed of me?” she asked with a disappointed look. As I looked into her eyes I said, “Never!” She looked back at me and then said with sorrow, “You don’t think I’m coming home.” I hugged her. I did not know how to react and she would never let me see her cry, so I cried for her. She looked at me with the utmost confidence and said, “I’ll be home in a week.”

She came home that next week and I can still remember how relieved I was to finally see her back in her chair.

Her daughter Lisa Infusino said, “My mom proved to me that all you need in this life is faith, courage, compassion and the love of your family and friends.”

Joyce Intorelli was a role model for how to treat people, especially the way she treated me my entire life. So when the time came, I just felt like I was returning the favor. She always had something for me to eat that she knew I liked: Reese’s, Hershey’s or chicken soup from Rosa’s Pizzeria. Whether she was doing good or bad she never thought about herself. For someone going through so much pain to only be thinking about me made me realize how special this woman was.

Me and my dad brought her bed downstairs one Sunday afternoon in late February when she was struggling to stand, let alone walk. She had a different kind of look in her eyes, one I never saw from her before, fear. She knew what was approaching and she told me she couldn’t fight it forever.

She laid in bed and only got up to use the restroom. She was holding on for about two weeks going on like this struggling to stay alive. I came home on March 7th and ran over to see her, I stayed much later than normal because the house just felt different. I sat beside her bed as she looked over at me and whispered, “Hold my hand.” While I was holding on she looked at me and said gently, “Thank you, I sure am going to miss you.” As I tried not to cry, because she would never let me see her cry, I did, I kissed her forehead and we never said another word to each other. We watched “Tom and Jerry” until she fell asleep.

The next day I came home from school as fast as I could hoping that when I got there she would be too but I didn’t make it. She was gone.

The last time I saw Laura Intorelli without her day-brightening smile. The house felt empty. It was like being out in the middle of a field, but it was filled with her family and friends. My stomach felt like someone had shot a cannonball through it.

Joyce Intorelli died in her bed in the living room watching television. As I looked at her one last time I knew she was finally at peace. I went from seeing her once a week to seeing her every day, she was my inspiration, my best friend. She gave me a reason to be happy and a reason to care for others more than myself. She made me realize it is more important to make other people happy, even when I may not be at my best. When I saw her it always made me feel better, when I saw her I knew I was home, but most of all, she was my “Birthday Buddy.”

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