As Christmas fast approaches, I am reminded of a Christmas from long ago. One that has touched my family, especially my mother, to this day.
Below is the text of a newspaper article that appeared in the Asbury Park Press on December 24, 2007. I remember how the events of the day in the article affected my mother, even for several years after. After hearing of the impact my mother made on this family, I cannot adequately express how profoundly proud I am to be able to call her 'Mom'.
On Dec. 24, 1983, Doris Cuocci woke up early to prepare her home for the coming Christmas celebration with her family.
Cuocci, a registered nurse, had to work the night shift - 3 to 11 p.m. - on Christmas Eve and wanted to get as much done as she could before she left.
But right before she could leave for work, she received a telephone call from the Holmdel First Aid Squad. Her youngest of four children, Robin Lynn, who had gone out to run some errands, was taken to the emergency room at Bayshore Community Hospital after the car she was driving skidded off an icy road and smashed into a tree.
Anxious and frightened, Doris and her husband, Matthew, rushed to the hospital, hoping their 17-year-old daughter would be OK.
They waited for several excruciating hours before doctors delivered the shattering news: They couldn't save the teen's life.
But the Cuoccis' story isn't all about the ultimate loss and grief; it's also about compassion and encouragement. It's about how one person's actions or words, however brief, can have everlasting impact on another.
"This is a bad dream, and I am going to wake up," recalled Doris, 72, in a recent telephone interview, of that day at the hospital. "And then, an angel of mercy, Mary Jane, came and she was absolutely wonderful. She explained how hard they worked to save Robin's life and all the medical procedures."
The angel of mercy was Mary Jane Stroz of Hazlet. Now 62, Stroz was an emergency room nurse the day Robin Lynn Cuocci was brought in.
Stroz, who said she was just doing her job, had sat down in the waiting room with the grief-stricken couple for almost an hour, hugging and consoling them.
"If it wasn't for Mary Jane, I think I would have been a basket case in one of the mental hospitals," said Doris, a longtime Holmdel resident.
"She (Mary Jane) is just a wonderful, wonderful person that God sent to us at a time when we really needed someone. I will never forget her kindness."
Every year since that day in 1983, the Cuocci family sends a Christmas prayer card to Stroz as a token of appreciation, even though it was not a happy ending.
"You meet people in life - especially nurses - some are very cold and callous and kind of noncaring. Mary Jane was everything that a nurse should be. She had all the sterling qualities of a truly professional nurse," said Doris, who at that time also worked at various places as a nurse. The two women do not have a social relationship. They only communicate with one another at Christmas.
Around the first anniversary of Robin's death in 1984, Doris paid a visit to the hospital with a homemade ceramic Christmas tree and a note to thank Stroz and the staff for everything they'd done to try to save her daughter's life.
Every Christmas, Stroz said she puts the ceramic tree in the front window of her house as a tribute to the family.
"It was very touching to me," said Stroz, a married mother of three, of receiving the ceramic tree that year.
"As nurses, when you do something, you don't know it had an impact on anybody," she said. "Nurses should know that what they say and what they do at a moment of tragedy can impact somebody for a long time. Especially when the outcome wasn't good, your impact is even more."
Cuocci and Stroz did not have another face-to-face meeting again until 1993, when Stroz paid an unannounced visit to the Cuoccis' Hillcrest Road home. She said she had been thinking about them and wanted to see how they were doing. Stroz had a son around the same age as Robin and said she felt it could have been her own child.
The women met again this December.
"I didn't realize the impact of those moments until somewhat down the road," said Stroz. She said she looks forward to receiving a card from the Cuoccis every year and has kept every single one.
"What she does for me every year gives me a little encouragement to just keep working and doing what I do every day," she said. "For nurses that have to deal with such horrifying things, that does make a difference."
To all my readers who celebrate, Merry Christmas.
To all my readers who do not, Happy Holidays.
