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A Few Clouds In remembrance of John Rosati
Family, community create event to honor 20-year-old who took his own life
June 24 was a terrible day for Jackie Fiorello and her family. After a months-long search for help for her nephew John Rosati, a 20-year-old who had moved into their Baldwin home three years earlier, Rosati took his own life.
He had called his aunt in 2011, asking for help. He was essentially homeless, after moving out of his mother and stepfather’s home in New Jersey and exhausting his other options. Jackie’s husband, Stephen, picked him up, and they gave him a fresh start in Baldwin, but what they didn’t know was that Rosati was a heroin addict.
It wasn’t long after the move that the Fiorellos — and their two school-aged children — discovered his addiction. Jackie got him into a rehab program and attended meetings with him. Then Rosati was admitted to a 30-day program upstate, but he didn’t see it through.
Last fall, Jackie moved him into a facility in Hempstead that is run by Seafield, an organization that provides addicts with resources and facilities. Rosati was allowed to visit the Fiorellos, but one night in November, when he was supposed to visit, he never showed up. The next morning, Jackie received a phone call telling her that he had been found behind a local pharmacy and taken to an area hospital. He had attempted suicide, but narcan was used to save his life.
At the hospital, Rosati told the staff psychiatrist that he didn’t feel like hurting himself anymore and, despite Fiorello’s protests, he was released. This was the second time he had attempted suicide — she said he had tried years earlier.
“John hated being an addict,” she said. “He was really looking forward to doing the right things, like getting a job and everything.” He worked with a Nassau County social worker and was on the right track, Fiorello said, but in June he relapsed. “He came to me and said, ‘I don’t want to live like this anymore,’” she recalled. “‘I don’t want to be an addict anymore.’”
Fiorello reached out to Seafield once again, looking to have Rosati admitted to its detox and inpatient rehabilitation facility in Westhampton Beach. Not long after she dropped her nephew off, however, she found out he had been denied because of his suicide attempt and because he had managed to stay sober the previous weekend.
