JORDANVILLE – Late at night, when her body is so wracked with pain
that she cannot sleep, Suzanne Randazzo is at her best, creatively
speaking. Armed with semiprecious gems, Kavorkian crystals and some
jewelry wire, Randazzo has learned to channel her suffering into works
of art – jewelry she hopes will soon brighten someone else’s day.
“I want to make jewelry that’s affordable and beautiful,” Randazzo
said as she held up a recently completed watch she wants to donate for
a fundraising effort to raise breast cancer awareness. “My goal is to
make someone feel beautiful. Every woman wants to feel pretty.”
This knack she has for creating original, one-of-a-kind necklaces,
bracelets and watches was discovered quite by accident when she found
herself short on funds last Christmas. “I found some old beads and
started putting things together and made them for Christmas presents. I
didn’t really have a lot of money,” she said.
In addition to brightening women’s lives with the jewels, Randazzo
hopes to raise money to help her own dire financial situation. While
she is a woman of simple means and needs, she has been plagued with
illness for much of her life. Lately, her hardest battle is dealing
with the pain resulting from SLE Lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, and
Hirschsprung’s Disease, which led to her recent surgery, where her
colon and large intestines were removed.
Recently, she developed a “black veil” over her right eye and was
told she suffers from a detached vitreous. “There’s like this black
spider web over my right eye. But I don’t let it stop me, it just slows
me down a bit. It does take longer to finish my pieces.”
Add to this a spinal cord compression in her back and neck that has
been the cause of so much surgery she can’t undergo any more
procedures or it “will take away what’s left of my mobility, my ability
to play with my granddaughter or design jewelry,” and Randazzo is left
with a life filled with pain and discomfort.
As a result of her “mixed connective tissue” disease and recent
surgery, taking medicine is a daily part of her life. Unfortunately,
being on a fixed income leaves her short on funds and makes it
difficult for her to pay for her medications.
So she goes without.
“I’m hoping I can sell some jewelry to make money so I can pay for
my prescriptions,” she said. She got into the jewelry business when a
long time friend provided her with the start up funds to make an
investment in beads and the tools needed to properly make jewelry. “If
it wasn’t for Richard Young, I wouldn’t be here right now. Without his
constant support, willingness to help and being there for me at every
turn, I wouldn’t be here right now. He loves my jewelry and thinks I’ll
do well.”
Christy Lee, owner of Christy’s Flower Shop, in Richfield Springs,
has also made an effort to support Randazzo, and now displays her
jewelry for sale at the shop, Randazzo said last week as she sat at her
kitchen table, her jewelry fanned out before her in a rainbow of
glimmering beads and baubles.
She held up a watch, a delicate design of pink crystals and
freshwater pearls and said this piece was headed for Christy’s. Then
she held up a second, more elaborately designed watch, similar in beads
and fashion, and said that this one she would like to be used for a
cancer awareness fundraising program.
“I want the funds to go to the Jean Handler Memorial. She was the
owner of the Red Sleigh Restaurant and passed away from breast cancer
in 1998, leaving behind four young girls,” said Randazzo, who had
served as Handler’s general manager. “Not a day goes by that I don’t
think of her.”
Without being able to work, due to the severity of pain and
immobility the diseases she suffers render her, Randazzo has the time
to do plenty of thinking. “Living with the pain every day is
horrendous, but designing the jewelry and seeing how it comes out moves
me into a different place,” she explained, “and then I forget the pain.”
As she sipped a steaming cup of coffee, Randazzo asked, “Do I
feel sorry for myself? No. There are so many more people out there who
are worse off than I am. I want to bring joy to their life. And I hope
my jewelry can do that.”
As the afternoon slipped away, she listed, like the patterns her
beads fall into, all of the people who help her. From her
granddaughter, Alexandra, who dumped her mushroom farm in the backyard
and now provides Randazzo with 30 pounds of mushrooms each season, to
her two sons, to the druggist at Kinney’s, to her cousin Cathy in the
Bronx, to her doctors, her list is endless.
She praises everyone who has ever touched her life. She hopes for
people she has never met, who suffer as she does, if not more. Her eyes
shine, beyond the constant cloud of pain marring the crystal blueness –
a blue more stunning than the crystals laying in a cup on her coffee
table.
“Women today have forgotten that we have a network out there. You
can form a bond with other women that can be so enriching to your
lives. We need to open up to other women. You’d be surprised. We’re
stronger than we think.”
Her strength makes her relentless in her quest to succeed with her
new hobby turned business, in her desire to bring inexpensive yet
beautiful jewelry to women who may not have the money to buy things for
themselves. “Who can afford $84 for a necklace,” she asked. “I will
never give up. I know I can make this work.”
Her drive, her energy, and her strength comes from her love of
people. “Anything I can do to help someone I want to do it, not for the
recognition, but just to touch other people’s hearts. If I can bring a
smile to someone’s face, then this is all worth it.”
Then, with a weary smile, she added softly, “From pain comes beauty.”
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