Frank Thomas Rotante (1961 - 2008)

New York
20 October 2008


Vade in Pace

I am known for being very verbose; I rarely answer or speak in few words, when many are available. And yet on the death of my uncle, at the age of 47, I cannot help but to express the simplest thoughts that have occurred to me. Of all the people there are to know, I know very few. But of those, Frank’s story, shortened though it yet was, was simple in its profundity. He was a loving father, he was a husband and partner in both darkness and light, sadness and happiness, trial and tribulation.

He was a great friend, he was a proud son, a brother, an uncle, a cousin, yes he was all those things that are by their own definition distinguishing. Yet as his nephew, on this day of great mourning, I feel compelled to offer a simple comment. He was simply a good person. That appellation doesn’t lend itself to everyone. He did not live the easiest life, to him was not given the kindest of paths, or the driest of roads. He endured much and lived the best of lives many would envy. But what I find the most important, what I find the most profound, is that despite all that, he did have the easiest smile, he did traverse the most slippery of roads, and he walked the rockiest paths.

He was the one I always expected to laugh, the one I always expected to find humor and light and happiness in but the dreariest of days, and he always did. To me, that is the most beautiful of qualities to name as human. A good person is not some random happenstance of the cosmos. Good people work hard to make others around them happy, to point to others those little things they miss, that they might smile even in the midst of adversity. In the end, they are my heroes, they are the ones who make peace on the earth, they are the ones who cast light where we could not see, they are the ones who remind us, life here is but brief, and briefer still to those who cannot see the good in every day.

In that sense, he lived a longer life than centuries of mortal existence might otherwise provide. As I know him, he never asked for anything, he never protested some injustice, he never judged. His was a disposition that simply did not include evils we normally express as simple truths. I wish it were only so easy to be such a good person, but they are yet rare, they are yet fleeting, they are our kind’s greatest treasures, and as we read in Matthew, where we place our treasure, so also do we place our hearts.

I have a special admiration for those who use their lives to brighten those of others. It requires a certain self-sacrifice which is both uncommon and exceedingly difficult. And yet it always seemed to come so easy to him. He was one of the most optimistic and happy people I knew, and when you consider it but carefully, that makes sense. For if you believe, as I do, that his greatest consolation came from knowing others around him were happy, that he brought joy and light to a world we have darkened with hatred and human corruption, then you can see why he was, and certainly remains, the happiest of people.

You can say many things of the dead – eulogies have a long, beautiful history. I think some are the greatest examples of human prose in existence, for they attempt to encapsulate what humans are, what they will for ever, and ever, be. Memories, that’s all we are.

We go forward, we live, and we take faith on a diet of hope, but we can only leave memories behind, the string of Theseus unfurled so that others might find us in the encompassing dark.

And between his many friends, his many family members, his wife, and his daughter, Frank left many strings, some we might actually never even be able to see. But assuredly we realize, that in some grand conceit of the cosmos, those strings were not left that we might find him, and rescue him from some darkened labyrinth. We come to see, albeit slowly, perhaps only in those moments we count as our last, that true light can only be seen in the darkness, that it is we, who are lost and blind in a maze.

We miss the simplest things, we cannot see or comprehend the most aggregate and obvious mechanics of the universe we live in. We are reduced to petty things, and upon those things we live and draw breath. These things suck in all our attention and produce all our machinations, we allow the evils of the human mind to consume us, and we live in a perpetual dark, no matter how many hours we might stare at the sun.

There are individuals who, in the unlikeliest of manners, show us that there are entire worlds we cannot see, they float before us like so many dark clouds behind which we think is only rain. But these people can teach us what might well be the final lesson that we learn as human beings. Happiness is not abstract; it is not based in some configured formula, or described by a particular equation. You cannot trade for it, you cannot wish it into existence, and you cannot steal it from another. Happiness is something that you must make for yourself in the very depths of the human spirit, it always lives.

Frank found his happiness so much the easier that he spent a lifetime trying to show others that joy which ultimately lies within us all, if only we could gaze deeply enough to see it. This is no great revelation to his daughter, or his wife, or his parents or siblings. But to me, I find it to be so incredibly and uniquely instructive.

We all live very different existences, we all make different choices, we all make all different mistakes. And though there are many who knew him better than I, he taught me that we can all be good people, and we can all be happy. It was a mantra that I believe he lived, and lived so exceedingly well, that I think he was successful beyond what he ever might have imagined. Just as he brought light wherever he chose to go, so to do I believe that he would not want his memory sullied by sadness, for it was not a concept he chose to understand.
The ancient philosophers argued, and they argue still, what the definition of the “good life” was. How could we live lives that were fundamentally happy? Kennedy wrote once of a ‘peace that makes life on earth worth living.’ It’s a quote I always tape on the walls of where I work and live. It suggests there’s some great mystery to what peace, to what happiness really is. And to many it is a mystery, we use our entire life looking for what truly makes us happy. It’s different for everyone, and so we are forced to find it on our own.

It is a hard journey with no guarantees, and there are some who enjoy life greatly yet never truly discover the happiness that all the philosophers were looking for. I think that Frank discovered that happiness. I’m sure his wife, my aunt Donna, and his daughter Caroline, were large parts of it, as was his entire family. And yet I think there was more to it. I think he found happiness in all things, for it allowed him a certitude and a humor that only the happiest amongst us can muster. They wonder how to define a “good life,” I wonder, how to define, peace.
I think Frank knew what that peace was, that peace that through every evil and sadness we could find happiness, that through the darkness, in the ‘light we should see true light’ itself. So I say that for me, he taught me a great secret, one we have sought for millennia. What is peace? What is the good life? What is a good person?

Look for happiness in everything, and smile and laugh and love, and if and when you might find it for yourself, make it your life’s work to help others find it as well, for we are all mortal, our time always brief, and in the end all but ‘dust and ashes.’ Happiness, like good people, like hope, never, ever dies.

I speak for him here, though he never said these exact words. Still, I think my Uncle would agree.

Go in peace.