Posted on 03/29/2017 7:15:49 PM PDT by TigerClaws
Isabella Marie Sammartano
With deep sadness we mourn the sudden passing of our dear daughter Isabella (Bella) Sammartano, age 20, who succumbed to her battle with addiction and died from a heroin overdose in our home on March 24, 2017. Showing strength, determination, and a love for life, Bella lived clean for the last 16 months before her sudden relapse last week, succumbing to this terrible disease, now an epidemic and taking far too many of our loved ones from us every day.
Bella will be remembered as intelligent and full of love, conviction, empathy, and with a sense of humor well beyond her years. Bella loved her family first, and here at home was where she felt safe and truly loved. Her empathy for others knew no bounds, and Bella was always quick to come to the defense of others. Bella loved the outdoors, the woods, and all the animals that lived there. She loved bones, fossils, rocks, feathers, mushrooms, and was generally in reverence of everything in the natural world. Bella could be found exploring the woods, observing nature, and reflecting on the science of things with a passion. Bella was also a talented artist who though secretive and modest about her abilities, was occasionally proud to share her amazing sketches with her family or closest friends.
After graduating from Kirkwood High School in 2014, Bella soon found herself struggling with the disease of addiction, and entered a number of recovery facilities in Minnesota, California, and Missouri, before returning to her Kirkwood home in 2016 and to her supportive and loving family. Here she attended St. Louis Community College at Meramec receiving the highest grades, making Dean’s List last semester, and where Bella was preparing herself for a future in the biological sciences. Bella had dreams. She spoke of graduate school and of working in a lab someday, and all of this seemed possible until her life was tragically cut short last week.
Bella is survived by her devoted and loving mom and dad, Christy Hathaway Sammartano and Dan Sammartano, and her adoring sister Francesca (Frankie) Sammartano, all of Kirkwood, Missouri. She also leaves behind her loving grandmother Carolyn Clark (Grandma Lyn) of Turners Falls, Massachusetts, and a loving and supportive family of Aunts, Uncles and cousins in Missouri and Massachusetts. These include her Aunt Valery Griffin (Uncle Pete) of Gill, MA, uncles Michael Hathaway (Katherine Mitchell) and Matthew Hathaway (Jessica Hathaway), of St. Louis, MO, and her uncle Chris Sammartano (Ann Fitzgerald) of Ipswich, MA. She also leaves her cousins Lexi Griffin of Gill, MA, Cooper Sammartano of Ipswich, MA, and Lucy, Romy and Ivy Hathaway all of St. Louis, MO. She also leaves behind her loving godmother Missy (Michel) Lewis, and “Aunt” Angela (Buckley) Martin, both of St. Louis. Bella is also survived by a lifetime of schoolmates, close friends, and people she came to know in and out of recovery.
Visitation: A Visitation will be held for the public at Bopp Chapel in Kirkwood, on Thursday, March 30, 2017 between 4:00 and 8:00 PM. A private service will be held in Massachusetts for close family.
Bella was a strong-willed woman choosing to fight the addiction her own way, but who would ultimately succumb to this terrible disease. It’s her family’s hope that her passing will bring awareness to heroin addiction as a treatable and organic disease, and to drug proliferation in our communities and homes. In honor of Bella’s short and wonderful life, please consider a donation to the Harris House Foundation, harrishousestl.org.
YOU are full of it if you are defending heroin addicts. Get lost.
You nor I have enough birthdays left for me to relate what I know about addiction, alcoholism, and the personal or familial abuse that goes with them. Let’s just leave it at that.
I celebrated 30 years of sobriety today. Drugs were also a part of my story. Every story is different but the result of not getting help is the same. Death, prison, or institutions. God’s grace keeps me sober. That and continuing to work with others. Interestingly after I got sober I also quit playing the victim and was transformed from a liberal to a conservative.
The needle and the damage done.
The drugs reduce the willpower and encourage a feeling of helplessness. That helplessness isn't actually there, but we can believe it is.
People migrate toward the right on the political spectrum as they control the temptation. People migrate toward liberalism to justify their behavior because liberalism minimizes any concept of “responsibility.”
Good for you!
For example, I had a friend who broke his right lower leg in a sledding accident. He spent 6 months in the hospital and endured several surgeries of which involved inserting about a 1 foot metal rod in his leg. Back then they relied way too much on morphine to relieve the pain. When he finally got out of the hospital, he was addicted. He became an abuser of heroin, but was always a functional person who was able to support his habit. I was his best friend and I never knew until many years later that he was doing heroin. Eventually we fell out of touch and I do not know his status today, but I know he used for many years. I do not think he ever mainlined it, instead he snorted it from a nose spray bottle. In fact he used to love to go ask a cop a question and spray his nose while talking to them. He got some kind of perverse kick out of that. I'm sure by now it has taken a toll on him, if he still is using, and most likely it has taken his freedom or his life. Before that he did no drugs and had no vices, and an extremely bright person.
You are so uninformed
Keep on keeping on though. Because ignorance is boiss
No I a, defending no one. I am telling you about real live people who became heroin addicts....and fortunately for then and their families they are in recovery and doing well
If you ain’t one....trust me when I tell you that you do not know.
You totally blew off my experience and training. So I am sure you can tell me so much more.....not
Cancer is a disease. Pneumonia is a disease. Parkinson’s is a disease.
Drug abuse is not.
My Father was an Alcoholic for over 60 Years.
He quit Drinking at age 79 after falling on his Face one too many times. He quit right after my Mother died. She was a Victim of his Alcoholism as were my Brother and I.
I attended his AA “Birthday” Celebration every year until he passed away last October at age 93. I was very proud of him when he quit Drinking and he started to go to AA.
He was Sober for the last 14 Years of his Life and he was an inspiration to the people at AA. If he could quit Drinking at his advanced age, they could quit too. He gave them hope.
The people there loved my Father and it was tough for them when he passed away.
That being said, the participants there call Alcoholism a Disease, I don’t.
I feel the same way about Drug Abuse, it is not a Disease.
I have Leukemia, THAT is a Disease.
Good for you my FRiend.
I hope your Life continues on the path of Sobriety.
A few years ago, when pot was easy and pretty legal, the Mexican cartels switched to really pushing heroin. It has worked wonderfully for them.
So many young teens, with zero supervision, their parents do not speak honestly about drugs with them or expose them to truths about the different drugs (they aren’t all the same in potential life changing harm). What do we THINK will happen? Most kids just want to party. Have fun. Even the smart ones who get good grades. Parents do NOT understand the drive kids have to alter their state with substances. So kids learn by doing.
It hasn’t changed much since I was young, but there was almost NO heroin around in my hoods when I was young. It was thought to be the one drug you don’t touch. Everything else was available in my high school, just walking down one hall.
But people need to know how scary some drugs are, because they take away that chance your brain has to THINK about what you took and DECIDE if you will take it again. Crack, meth, and heroin sometimes have that effect on people. You need to not TOUCH those. Some people drop their entire lives after one time, and just go after that buzz forever. And forever ain’t very long if you do. But kids always are sure they will live forever. And since they lived through whatever crazy crap they did the night before, they assume that they will live through tonight.
I definitely note that teen athletes who practice daily do not seem to have as much trouble. Will they smoke a joint, or get drunk on beer? Yes. They might. But they KNOW if will affect their performance if they do too much of even that. They seem to not need that “high” from drugs as much as kids with no heavy sports. They do wild amazing things in real life, on the field, in the gym, on the ice. For real. Plus their free time is spent on their sport. My athletes only had time after practice for homework, food, and a bit of online video gaming with their buddies. I recommend having each kid have some sport they enjoy and work it hard during the middle and high school years.
Sad, yes, but there is a SUREFIRE WAY to not get addicted to opiates.
I’ve had two major brain surgeries and four c sections. Especially after the brain surgeries, you needed opiates. I wouldn’t have wanted to live without them. Thank Gd for the Poppy plant. Some pain you wouldn’t want your worst enemy to feel. Well, maybe your worst enemy!
Anyway, here is the surefire way to know when to stop the pain pills. The time when you say, I’m going to take one now, for the pain that will probably happen later. BOOM. This feeling always happens when you’ve been on opiates for a couple days. Your brain tells you, take one now... for later... and you need to step in RIGHT THEN and not take one. The next day will be easy to pass them up. It always works for me.
But yes, I understand the pull of them. After my first surgery, they had been shooting me up with morphine in my front thighs (I was in another country) every time I said the word for pain. They sent me home after a week of this, with some low dose opiate pill. The first day in my own bed I lay there with tears streaming down my cheeks in bed while every rustle in the next room was like a cacophony. I couldn’t even sleep, I just lay there in some kind of hell that was beyond pain. But it passed.
My last two c sections, after recovery I refused the Demerol shots that were offered. I wanted to be alert for the baby. No one needs to be a hero, but a little pain in life won’t kill ya.
My personal opinion is that the supposed epidemic is solely caused by an educational system that makes no sense, inculcates irrational ideas, thus the most serious and intelligent kids who want to understand the purpose and meaning of life end up hopeless, helpless, lost, vulnerable to someone or thing that offers relief from chronic psychic pain. I formed this opinion watching my high school mates in the 60’s dropping LSD and dropping out after years of American style dumbed down schooling.
Here’s the deal, y’all. Life is a sentence and it is pointless and painful. Drugs, alcohol and other addictions distract humans from the pain.
If life wasn’t such a bitxh, addictions wouldn’t happen. The Freeper comments on this topic are unneccesarily heartless. Freepers are kidding themselves if you think there is any answer for this human condition of being sentenced to live in a living hell called earth.
“...struggling with the disease of addiction...”
DISEASE is it? How about lifestyle or personal choice to break the law?
I can tell you our very own politicians are in many ways tied to this lucrative market that is killing our youth
I disagree that this is a disease; it is a moral choice like any other sin. Like any other sin, there can be a biochemical, and neurological reward system that makes continuing in sin desirable, and stopping very unpleasant for a time, but ultimately it is still a choice.
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