In memoriam: Melissa Difatta

Friends and family members remember the 21-year-old Pitt student who died in early August as an honest writer with a great sensibility. When about 150 of Melissa Difatta’s closest family and friends gathered Friday in a lofty Wildwood church to share their favorite memories of the young writer from Hampton, they said it was a scene she would have appreciated.

Light from the late-morning sun poured through tall stained-glass windows in warm blues, yellows, greens and gold. The dazzling rays softened the mourners’ black suits and demure dresses as they sat in long church pews.

Some held hands and others cried softly, but all of them faced forward, staring at one solitary point — the long, wooden casket laid before the altar.

Friends said Difatta, a Pitt student, had a keen eye for such details, a skill that helped her excel in creative writing and other subjects before she died last week after a prolonged fight with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a cancer originating from the white blood cells. She was 21.

She would have appreciated the priest’s sermon too, they said. It was a remembrance that traced the history of Christian persecution through the ages to remind those in attendance that while there is mourning and sadness in death, there is also joy.

“Melissa’s life holds as much meaning as her stories,” said Rev. Regis M. Farmer, looking solemnly over Difatta’s casket.  “Her spirit and heart [were] a gift to the world that will continue to inspire love and wonder in our lives. Life doesn’t end. Life changes.”

As Farmer spoke, he laid a white pall and a small wooden crucifix across Difatta’s casket.

“Just like our lord, Melissa came into this world to help and spread the gospel of life,” Farmer said. “Not by reading from a book or standing behind a pulpit. She did it through her life, through living.”

A writer’s life

Difatta described the moment she was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma in her memoir “The Bone Marrow Queen.”

“I am fifteen when my doctor tells me I am sick,” she wrote. “That’s where my memories begin. Before that, I lived someone else’s life —someone who I don’t talk to anymore, not because I don’t want to, but because I can’t.”

That sensibility and honesty helped Difatta win the 2009 Undergraduate Creative Nonfiction Award from Pitt. Difatta’s parents say those qualities defined her.

“It comforts my husband Frank [Difatta] and I so much that Melissa has touched and been touched by so many people,” said Debra Difatta, Melissa’s mother. “Melissa taught us not to destroy our lives out of fear of death.”

Difatta touched many lives, she said, not just on Pitt’s campus. When she graduated from Hampton High School about 20 minutes north of Pittsburgh, she enrolled at Hobart William Smith College in New York after receiving a creative writing scholarship.

Melissa had a relapse and returned home after three weeks, her mother said. She took a year off school to have a bone marrow transplant before enrolling at Pitt, where she eventually became the editor of the “Three Rivers Review” literary magazine.

In all of that work, she never lost sight of her family, said Shelley Difatta, Melissa’s sister.

She recalled her sister as a compassionate sibling who was “very, very protective of her friends and family” and had “an unusually high tolerance for trashy TV and horror movies.”

“She had an incredible sense of loyalty, she would do anything for the people she cared about,” Shelley Difatta said. “She was a total book nerd. She would always make recommendations and playlists of songs for us.”

Prior to her illness, Difatta traveled to Rome, Sydney, Venice, London and France.

After her diagnosis, she continued to pursue her dreams of writing and art. She was elected director of the drama club her senior year of high school.

In one of her many journals, she listed her proudest accomplishment as the time she caught a fish with her bare hands.

During the service, long-time friend Julia Rosenfeld described the final days of Difatta’s life, asking everyone in attendance to always keep her memory alive.

“Even at the end Melissa remained the most beautiful, empathetic, loving, amazing, most badass person most of us have ever known,” she said. “We will always love her and keep her close to our hearts.”