Donna: Poet, Cheerleader and Friend

As I wrote in my previous post, Donna Marie DeGuglielmo was my friend, who’s passing on November 19, 2021 has affected me more than I would have imagined. Sometimes, you see, my friend would get on my nerves. Sometimes, I wouldn’t answer the phone when she called. Actually, there were many, many times when I would not answer the phone — mostly because I hate the phone. But she was lonely and desperate for telephone conversations, so in her quirky, persistent, funny, and sometimes blunt, sometimes sweet way, she wore me down with her pleas.

I would call her one month and then every other week. We started Skype conversations, and I really enjoyed those, but we had to stop them when Donna had more strokes and found the screen too stimulating. In the last nine months or year of our relationship, we spoke on the phone about every week. I’m still feeling guilt right now that the phone calls often felt more like a duty than a delight.

Tribeswomen

Whether through email, video chats, or telephone conversations, Donna and I conversed most frequently about faith and writing — I tried to always keep our conversations focused on these subjects. It was fairly easy since we were both Catholic, and she was writing a memoir like I was trying to write a memoir. I’ve written poetry since I was a little girl, and she discovered poetry after her aphasia began. When Donna wrote to me or shared some of her writings with me, her language disorders were obvious. For our telephone conversations, she advised me how to communicate with her — engage in active listening, allow her to find words on her own, and limit the number of questions I would ask — useful things to know when conversing live with stroke survivors. She always had a good sense of humor about all of it. “I’m not drunk, I’m just slurring,” she would say and giggle.

In light of her language challenges, her desire and ability to take up poetry was beautiful and impressive to me. Despite having great difficulty in finding the right words, and dyslexia on top of everything, she was able to string words together in lovely little poems, with their own particular pacing, that were true expressions of who she was. Because I knew her well, when I read her work I get the feeling of every word being a treasure, one sought for with great yearning and difficulty and then cherished and caressed when found.

In 2018, we both resolved to get a book published. She put out a free PDF book entitled Creative Poetry Prayer. Her desire was to write many chapbooks and to teach creative poetry prayer to stroke survivors and other people with aphasia. She was always ambitious with big ideas and dreams. She gave me the audiobook The Memoir Project by Marion Roach Smith, which she also listened to for writing the story of her own life. Although the book that I wrote in 2018 did not turn out to be the memoir I had intended, this book by Smith was very helpful in the writing of It’s Good to Be Here. With all of the advice that she shared with me, tips and tricks that she found on various websites and in various groups, she was my only friend who was a writing companion. We made up our own tribe, she said. Because Donna Marie (who went by Donna Maria on her blog) was such a good motivator and cheerleader, she is deservedly in the acknowledgments for my book. I was also in hers.

Coming to an End

In 2021, Donna kept falling in her apartment and received several concussions. The strokes just got worse from there. She would go to the hospital and then rehab, and then back home. And then she would end up in the emergency room again and back in a nursing care facility. This went on for several months. Because she had a cell phone, I was able to keep in touch with her, although we didn’t often talk for very long at all because of her fatigue. She always sounded upbeat, however, never defeated, always making plans, even new, grander plans. Sometimes, however, she would confess that she simply wanted to watch Little House on the Prairie or some other TV shows, and once she asked me if I thought God would be disappointed with her for that. I assured her that He would not be disappointed, reminding her that God loved her beyond imagining.

Then, one day, I called Donna’s phone and left a voice message. She didn’t return my call, but that didn’t worry me at this point in our conversations until I called again and her phone was off. Still undeterred, I kept calling, but her phone kept on going directly to voicemail.

I had a bad feeling.

Never To Hear Her Voice Again

So I tracked down her brother Danny through social media and messaged him. He informed me that she had been moved to the hospital again and had to have surgery. The phone had stopped working and she was, at that point, unable to talk anyway. So I told him to tell her that I was praying for her and to say “peace” to her for me, because that’s how we always ended our conversations. He visited her every day and wrote back the next day to tell me that she had smiled when he gave her my message. I then sent him voice clips through Facebook and he played them for her when he visited. I came to understand that she could not feed herself or move her arms, though she did begin twitching one of her hands, no doubt showing her impatience to speak, to get up and do something. But then her breathing became very labored.

I knew what direction this was taking, even though her brother had been very optimistic to that point. Still, that morning when I read his message telling of her passing in the night, I sat silently in front of my computer, stunned by grief. I couldn’t speak. I could barely move. I didn’t even want to breathe lest I start bawling.

There were so many times when I felt burdened by Donna’s need for friendship and communication, times when I was frustrated with her political statements or even her loneliness. Pity had perhaps been my first motivation to befriend Donna, and my efforts were mostly seen by me as a kind of Christian duty. But with all now said and done, I know that she was truly my friend. She was always my friend as I was hers. I miss her more than I imagined I would, there have been many things that I have wanted to share with her since November when she passed. Thankfully, she was indeed a woman of deep and vibrant faith, and I believe that she passed into a far better place, a marvelous existence beyond imagining, and she is having a great party with her jamboree of Angels and Saints, never ever lonely again.

One thing that greatly saddens me, dear reader, is that her blogs are no longer visible to any of us, and I fear much of her work, including her memoir, is lost. Her little e-book remains, so I would like to share it with you. (Please click HERE.) You may also want to see her on her YouTube channel HERE. (I watch my videos once in a while, just to hear her voice again.) If you read Creative Poetry Prayer or watch one of her videos, then please go to her Facebook account and kindly leave a comment there as a tribute to her.

And thank you very much for letting me introduce you to Donna Marie, poet and friend.

© 2022 Christina Chase

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Feature Photo by Hush Naidoo Jade Photography on Unsplash