A glimpse beneath the sham and the decadence

Written by Joe Pisani
Wednesday, 11 May 2011 09:05

Anyone who ever wore faded bell-bottoms or a wide-lapel sports jacket with a polyester tie and watched “Welcome Back, Kotter” is old enough to remember Phoebe Snow, whose most famous hit, “Poetry Man,” was a lilting love song about an awkward young woman infatuated with a married man.

She was nominated for a Grammy in 1975 as best new artist and showed enormous promise, but her career stalled because of a momentous choice she made early in life when she decided the most important thing wasn’t success or celebrity — it was taking care of her daughter, Valerie Rose, who was severely brain-damaged.

It was a decision that led to emotional stress, financial problems and bad business decisions.

Valerie wasn’t expected to survive beyond her early years because she suffered from hydrocephalus — fluid in the brain cavity that prevents development. But to Snow, her daughter was her greatest accomplishment, even eclipsing the success she enjoyed in the music industry.

“She was my universe. She was the nucleus of everything,” she said when Valerie died in 2007 at 31. “I used to wonder, am I missing something? No. I had such a sublime, transcendent experience with my child. She had fulfilled every profound love and intimacy and desire I could have ever dreamed of.”

When she resumed her music career, every performance she gave was dedicated to Valerie Rose.

If we all loved our children as much, if we were all loved as much, the world would be an entirely different place, much different from the place it is, populated by people like Charlie Sheen, the cast of Jersey Shore and the other mindless reprobates crawling across the planet.

But if you look, you’ll find a different world beneath the sham and decadence, in the hearts of decent men and women who understand the importance of caring for others.

I’m reminded of a minister who cared for his paraplegic wife through a monotony of days, going from doctor to doctor for decades until she died. And the wife of a man afflicted with a congenital illness who sat for countless hours in hospital waiting rooms.

And the woman who looked after her mother-in-law while her mind slipped away, memory by memory, because of Alzheimer’s. And the nun who sat up endless nights, caring for a young man in a coma after a boating accident.

There’s little glamour caring for the sick and dying. There are no headlines, no rewards, no great honors, no bonus checks. Sadly, one of the noblest callings in life is one of the least recognized. But by caring for those who suffer, we learn compassion and compassion makes us human.

On the day we see the sum total of our lives pass before us, the successes and the failures, the kindness and the malice, then caring men and women will be marked among the greatest. Fame and fortune are soon forgotten, only unselfish acts of love are eternal.

Phoebe Snow suffered a brain hemorrhage in January 2010 and was put in a medically induced coma. She died April 26 at 58 years old.

Joe Pisani can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .