Dedication & Passion: The Heart of Dore Frances’ Mission

Frances M. Cascinai was the woman who adopted me, and though she was younger than me when she passed away at thirty-seven, she has lived with me every day of my life.

We shared nine years, and I knew her in a way others didn’t. There’s an openness that comes with proximity to death, and through that openness, she saw me in every way that mattered despite all my differences. On the night she died, while I was six hours away, I spontaneously started crying at the dinner table.

Hours later, my mother was harmed, and I felt as if my own body was being violated. As a child, I often felt everything around me as if the world was an extension of my body. My mom used to tell me that I would struggle in life because most people would not accept this about me. When my father divorced my mother and left us, I was so elated that I climbed onto the dining room table and stood there, laughing. My mother just watched and smiled, and for the first time, my body felt safe again. I once met a psychiatrist who understood why I was elated.

He said, “Yes. And you were traumatized.” I was happy he knew this without knowing anything about me, and it made me wonder. I was in my twenties and had been living my life feeling everything around me. What happens to the body when it constantly absorbs the pain of others?

For nine years, my mother and I were very close in a nonconventional sense. I always felt like she was meant to adopt me, and I was on loan with her for a very short period. During one of our final conversations in the barn, she got up the nerve to tell me how sorry she was that we wouldn’t have more time together and how much she truly loved me.

I thought she meant more time that day, so I said, “It’s okay.” Then she told me we would always be connected through an invisible golden thread.|

Two months later, the day came when we would never speak again—at least not in the conventional way.

My mother saved my life three times: once when I was sixteen, once when I was thirty-six, and again when I was sixty.

There has always been a part of me that lives on the other side of life here on Earth.

You may be asking, on the other side of what? I still don’t know. I do know that is where my mother is. I was not allowed to attend my mother’s funeral. My father refused to let me go.

My Grandpa George reminded me, “Your Mom will hear everything you say. And I know she will always be listening.”

This one’s for you, Mom.