ALFONSO CHECCHI

A Letter of Love for

  Alfonso Checchi

Dear Loved Ones,

If any of you are thinking as to why I have waited so long to have a memorial for my husband, it was because I loved him for so long. In the beginning I could not put him in the ground. Fifty- eight years of marriage held me back. Little by little I began to make decisions.

Alfonso was in and out of hospitals for a number of years. The last four years of his life was constant care. The time in a hospital, prior to his last one, he had to be put on a ventilator. When he came out from under it, he told me that he had gone to the “Other Side”. He also said “but I didn’t see other people.” I said to him “That’s because you didn’t die. You came back to us.” He continued describing what he saw. “It was a beautiful blue sky. I was walking through white fluffy clouds. It was so peaceful!” The day before this revelation, I had a priest anoint him and pray for him. It was a number of months later when he would take a final ride in an ambulance to the hospital.

Alfonso was a farmer most of his life. After retiring from farming, he worked for the California Horse Racing Board, managing off-track betting facilities in Bakersfield, Vallejo, and Santa Maria. He loved traveling and we did a lot of it. He had a genius memory and could remember every person he met and could tell their stories that they told him.

Alfonso and I had a wonderful life. He worked, we traveled, we retired. I am taking my husband’s ashes back to the Midwest where I grew up and still have family and friends. Alfonso’s ashes will be buried in the family cemetery where my great grandfather had donated both the property for a church and a cemetery. Alfonso’s family has had him in life. My family will have him in death; for they also loved him.

Alfonso leaves behind his wife, his four children, his grandchildren, his sisters and brother, and their families, brother-in-law, sister-in-law, his nieces and nephews, his cousins, his friends. God called out his name and he went forth.

Alfonso Edward Checchi

Born: May 22, 1936

Died: August 26, 2022