Along with Christmas trees, bright lights, and holiday shopping, December 2017 brought two painful losses to my family. On December 9, my brother-in-law, Luciano Farina, passed away from cardiac arrest at Riverside Methodist Hospital. He had been in and out of the hospital since Thanksgiving with lung, kidney, and heart problems. However, when I visited him on the evening of December 8, he seemed better. He was able to sit up in bed and eat a little. His voice was weak but audible, and when he went to sleep that night, the doctors didn’t think he needed an oxygen mask. But a few hours later, a terse message came to my phone from my nephew Lorenzo: “He’s gone.”

Luciano was a remarkable man. After earning his bachelor’s degree in theoretical philosophy, he came to the United States to study at the Josephinum Pontifical College in 1966. He went on to earn his master of fine arts in Medieval Italian Literature followed by his PhD in Romance Linguistics at The Ohio State University. Luciano received international recognition for his development of innovative computerized methodologies in text analysis, focusing on cross-referencing, morpho-semantics, and syntactical tagging. A confidante of the late Italian Senator Paulo Emilio Taviani, he helped translate and interpret the Senator’s works on Christopher Columbus, and gave me the honor of editing the English language volumes. Luciano helped others connect with and understand their own Italian heritage. In particular, his book, Tremosine: Lombard Voices from America, gave Italian-Americans in central Ohio the opportunity to tell their stories.

A teacher as well as an author, Luciano worked at OSU from 1971 to 2012 first in the Department of Romance Languages and later in the Department of French and Italian. During that time, he became the university’s director of Italian studies.

Far more important to me than his academic achievements was Luciano’s devotion to his wife, my sister Claire. That devotion never wavered even after she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and later with breast cancer. It is my sincere hope that the two of them are now united in a world free of the afflictions that burdened their lives on this planet.

Two days after Luciano’s death, Lulu, my family’s 14-year-old Bichon Frise, had to be euthanized. My wife made this difficult decision after a sonogram revealed a large growth (likely cancerous) in the dog’s intestine that prevented her from digesting food. Lulu and I had an up-and-down relationship. She often annoyed me with her piercing bark and her bad habit of chewing on loose toys or discarded underwear. But she was good with my grandchildren and had an endearing way of poking her head between the balusters above the kitchen floor. Lulu also deserves credit for bringing comfort to my wife and stepchildren during a dark and lonely period in their lives.

Ironically, there was a connection between Luciano and Lulu that proved to be detrimental to both of them: Diabetes. For the last 2 1/2 years of Lulu’s life, my wife and I gave her insulin shots after each meal. During that time, her appetite decreased along with her weight, probably making her more vulnerable to disease. Luciano also had to take insulin. Even with that treatment, his diabetes almost certainly contributed to the cardiovascular problems that cost him his life. I am glad that as a new year prepares to dawn, Luciano and Lulu are beyond the reach of all the diseases and disorders that challenge the well-being of those of us who remain on this earth.