Recollections of Rosalie Ragucci-Cook

My grandmother (Rose Ciaccio) lived with us from when I was 6 months old in 1977.   In the years that she lived with us, she spent most of her time in the kitchen cooking.   She had a huge collection of rubber bands in the kitchen drawer that we always threatened to bury her with (we didn’t).  She went into the nursing home the summer before I left for college in 1995.  She had a stroke and nearly died that summer.  I remember saying goodbye to her when I left for school and thinking I would never see her again.  Amazingly, she recovered and although she couldn’t walk and had a difficult time swallowing, she was herself in every other way.   At 90 years old in her wheelchair in the nursing home, she would tell us that she didn’t eat her ice cream for lunch because she didn’t want to get fat. 

She died in 2005, nine years after her stroke.  When she lived with us, she always liked the analog clock on the stove, even though the rest of us didn’t use it.  The clock stopped working a few years after she went into the nursing home.  It had been broken for at least 7 years when she died.  The day of her funeral, her daughter was standing in the kitchen and heard this unexpected ticking sound.  She looked at the clock and not only was it working again but it was set to the exact right time!  The clock worked for a few days and then stopped again and has never worked again.  We know that grandma came home again and fixed her clock for us.