Papa Lu

Papa Lu was a strong, hardworking man who knew the value of patience and listening. After seven patient years of working together, Luciano asked out the woman who would become his wife. Antonia, his wife of thirty-two years told us, “We started drinking soda water together and going for ice cream during our supper break. After several months, we had our first meal together, and we were together and never separated.” While other men were loud talkers, Luciano was quiet, a good listener, a man who raised Antonia’s five children as his own and was “Papa Lu” to their ten grandchildren and one great grandchild.  

For the last eighteen years of his life, Papa Lu was a maintenance worker at the single school in the small town where their grandchildren went to school. The grandchildren talked about their Papa Lu, and soon the name stuck…with the other children, the teachers at the school, the small community.  

After fighting against cancer for four years, without complaint, “no moans or groans,” the family accepted hospice care for Papa Lu, and at the encouragement of their hospice social worker, Antonia and Luciano submitted a dream request to Project 4031. Papa Lu, the oldest of his parents’ eleven children, wanted to fly to Palm Springs, California, to see his little brother one more time. Papa Lu worked up until the day before the flight. With the help of their son, Luciano and Antonia traveled to Dallas to board their flight to Palm Springs.  

Overjoyed to be together again, the brothers took a sightseeing trip into the desert…the goal a beautiful oasis and a date farm where they enjoyed date shakes. After that day, Luciano was too tired to go out, but the brothers sat together, and Antonia and Lu, the quiet brother, enjoyed listening to his younger brother, the talker, share stories. When you are with people you love, just being together is fun.   

When it was time to get on the plane to come back to Dallas, the brothers said their goodbyes, and Luciano was so weak that he didn’t complain when Antonia insisted she push him in a wheelchair. For the next week, his energy waxed and waned. One evening, Luciano requested that Antonia make him a hamburger with the works, and he sat down and ate and enjoyed the whole thing. The next morning Antonia found him collapsed on the floor, and he did not rally after that.  

Antonia shared “their love story for the books” and thanked Project 4031 for making the trip that was the highlight of Luciano’s last days a reality, “It was the greatest thing for him, and it never would have happened except for you.” How blessed we were to be a part of Papa Lu’s end-of-life story.