Paul Faranda, 1958-2005

Four days ago, Wednesday, September 28th, we got the news that my brother Paul had died. He’d missed his dialysis appointment and when they went looking for him, they found his body in the bathroom. He was 47.

This is tragic and heartbreaking. We are all crushed. But it is not surprising. My brother was sick from the age of three onwards, suffering from congenital kidney disease and juvenile diabetes. In 1962 and 1963 he spent many months in New York Hospital, and my parents would return from the hospital and say, “we don’t know if Paul is coming home.”

My brother Jim and I have vivid memories of the night we spent with my parents friends – Paul and June Dennis and their family in Ossining - while they took Paul to the New York Hospital emergency room. He was being treated for kidney disease in Westchester but he had not been diagnosed as a diabetic. So to build him up, at the recommendation of physicians, we were merrily loading him up with high calorie meals. And he was getting sicker and sicker.

He was diagnosed with severe diabetes at New York Hospital and in the space of a bit over a year, spent about eight months there. Jim and I also have vivid memories of us standing along the East River (New York Hospital fronts the East River and FDR Drive) watching the barges go by, while Mom and Dad visited Paul. This was over forty years ago, and children were not allowed to visit hospital floors (infections, you know). It was pretty boring to stand out there, and then for a few minutes Paul and my parents would be at an eighth floor window, waving to us like maniacs, while we waved back.

You don’t realize it when you are eleven years old, but the whole ordeal must have been horrific for my parents – a very ill four year old hospitalized 35 miles away, and two other boys at home, who you are trying to construct a normal life for.

So ultimately Paul had one damaged kidney, a ureterostomy (the ureter that runs from the kidney to the bladder is instead routed to the surface of his right flank and he wore an “appliance” to catch the constantly draining urine), and diabetes requiring insulin and constant blood sugar monitoring.

Now fast forward fifteen or so years and Paul is graduating from Cornell University, having spent four years on their rowing team as a coxswain! Pretty good going!

The coxswain is the little guy who sits at the back of the skiff, steering it, and setting the tempo (“stroke, stroke”) while everyone else is pulling on the oars. Typical Faranda – do all the talking while everyone else does the heavy lifting. One of Paul’s prize possessions is the Harvard jersey he lifted in 1980 when Cornell beat Harvard for the first time in almost 20 years in a dual race.

Soon after graduating from the School of Hotel Administration, Paul moved to Texas and went to work in the hotel industry. He gradually gravitated to the accounting end of things.

Paul was very careful about taking care of himself, since his health was a constant issue. He was fastidious about his diet, his blood sugar levels and his consultations with kidney specialists. He was self-effacing and never wanted to be a burden to anyone.

Now diabetes can affect the circulatory and renal systems, and by 1993 Paul needed to go on dialysis. He also started having trouble with his vision. He was on dialysis until 1998 when he underwent a kidney and pancreas transplant. They also re-hooked his ureter to a re-fashioned bladder (a loop of bowel) so for a while he could pee like the rest of us – for the first time since he was three.

The transplanted kidney failed in 2001 and he went back on dialysis. Then in 2004 the transplanted kidney developed a tumor.

Paul was back in New York this past June and July for about six weeks. His health had clearly gone downhill – I felt he’d aged tremendously. However he had a great time while he was here, going to his 25th college reunion – my brother Phil took him up - as well as to a big family reunion my Uncle Bud puts on every July. So it was a great trip for him.

I am sure Paul’s biggest regret was that he’d never married and had a family. It just never worked out for him. It would have been great if he’d had children. He was a fun Uncle to his nephews. (When I suggested to my mother yesterday that my son Tim shared some of Paul’s mischievous impulses, she blanched.) I think in the last year or two Paul realized that the marriage opportunity window was closing, and he sometimes became a bit down about that.

All in all, a courageous man, filled with grace and humor. And hope. A person of great hope. When people have remarked to me that I seem to be handling my lymphoma situation well, I have always said – “This is nothing, let me tell you about my brother Paul.”

I spoke to Paul twice in the last two weeks, first when he called me up to see how my chemo was going, and then the Thursday before he died, when I called him to find out how he was planning to ride out the hurricane. He said “It wont be a problem, I am going to stay here (he lived in Round Rock, a suburb of Austin) and I’ve got my dialysis scheduled for Friday and Monday.” And as we signed off he said what he always said, “Love ya.”

My brother Jim summed up Paul exactly right Wednesday night when he said, “He led a noble life.”