Beach Nov 2016
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The Bisignano family, from left, Jonathan, Angela, Gerard, and David.<br />
Photo courtesy the Bisignano family<br />
was something quite more. He looked me in the<br />
eye and shook my hand.”<br />
Thus began a friendship that would have all the<br />
usual “shenanigans,” as Savar said, that teenage<br />
boys get up to together — the sports, misadventures,<br />
girl chasing, and epic hangouts of the<br />
bumpy, exuberant years of high school.<br />
But comradery with Jonathan had another<br />
level. He was somebody who found deeper ways<br />
to connect, both with friends and family and the<br />
world at large.<br />
“We would talk about God, family, our community,<br />
our country, what it all means, and what our<br />
place is in it,” Savar said.<br />
“We’d have conversations about metaphysics<br />
and the newest information on consciousness research<br />
all the way, basically, to what happens<br />
after you die,” Riley said. “That was something<br />
he researched, especially after high school. He<br />
was always exploring.”<br />
He played some football early in high school,<br />
but then grabbed hold of the idea that the school<br />
needed a rugby team. So he put one together with<br />
his friends.<br />
“He didn't just play football, he had to play<br />
rugby, with no pads,” his mother, Angela, said.<br />
“He couldn't just run and do hurdles, no, he had<br />
to be the pole vaulter — like he would always be<br />
going for the thing that would make me be on my<br />
knees praying, ‘Oh Lord what is he doing now?’”<br />
Jonathan also had an ability to learn on the fly,<br />
and to do so with an almost maddening ease.<br />
“He picked up rugby really quickly,” Riley said.<br />
“He was a smaller guy, but he was tough. He really<br />
got into rugby. He was 5’7’’, a buck thirty,<br />
maybe forty. But he was an animal.”<br />
“He was very hands on,” Riley said. “Back<br />
when we met, it was skateboarding, then he got<br />
into the surfing thing, playing piano, playing guitar.<br />
He didn’t even let a lot of people know he<br />
played piano, I think he was a little embarrassed...And<br />
he was weirdly good at everything<br />
he tried.”<br />
Jonathan was an exceptional student. He<br />
dreamt of going to USC, and lived that dream. In<br />
college, he met the girl of his dreams, a beautiful<br />
doe-eyed journalism student named Casey<br />
Tamkin, with whom he began to plan a life beyond<br />
college. Last spring, he was preparing to<br />
graduate with a degree in international relations<br />
and economics and pursue a career in investment<br />
banking. With typical, methodical avidness, he’d<br />
applied with 100 firms, and was advancing in the<br />
multilevel hiring process that the highest level financial<br />
firms require. Instead of doing the usual<br />
fraternity brother spring break to Cabo, he flew<br />
with a friend to Japan simply to better know how<br />
that corner of the world worked.<br />
His parents noticed that after his return he was<br />
experiencing unusual weariness, beyond normal<br />
jet lag. But he kept charging: a weekend in Vegas<br />
with his fraternity brothers, then a weekend in<br />
the desert with his girlfriend at the Coachella<br />
music festival. The couple drove back together<br />
Monday morning, April 18, and made plans to<br />
meet for dinner that night.<br />
He then went to his apartment and took a nap<br />
from which he never woke up.<br />
At the time of his passing, at the age of 22, the<br />
circumstances — a college kid who’d been at a<br />
music festival — led to a widespread assumption<br />
he’d experienced an overdose. The USC Daily<br />
Trojan reported “accidental overdose” as the<br />
likely cause of death. Initially, due to the news<br />
report, his father accepted the assumption, despite<br />
the fact that it seemed entirely out of character<br />
for Jonathan and no drugs were found near<br />
his son.<br />
“He went to Coachella, it ended on Sunday and<br />
he partied all night long like kids do, into the next<br />
days, probably took something somewhere along<br />
the way he shouldn't have, he wasn't sure how<br />
powerful it was, whatever, and then finally made<br />
it home after maybe 48 hours up and just faded,”<br />
Gerard said. “That was the assumption.”<br />
But the truth was he'd done nothing of the<br />
kind. He and Casey left the festival’s final show<br />
and grabbed some food. Far from partying, he’d<br />
dutifully waited an hour-and-a-half in line with<br />
her just so she could have the noodles she<br />
wanted. Afterwards, they went back to their<br />
condo rental for a good night's sleep.<br />
The next night, his heart simply gave out.<br />
“There is just a moment,” his father said later,<br />
“where the number of beats that God has allowed<br />
to you comes to an end.”<br />
His family had a history of congenital heart failure.<br />
Angela’s father experienced four heart attacks<br />
and died of the final one, at the age of 54.<br />
But those who knew Jonathan best saw something<br />
beyond a genetic condition. They saw a<br />
young man who lived as if each day could be his<br />
last, a friend, son, and brother gone far too soon,<br />
but one who left behind lessons in love and living<br />
for those left in the wake of the startlingly beautiful<br />
and bold swath he cut on his way through<br />
this life.<br />
“Jon, you were taken from us far too soon,” his<br />
girlfriend, Casey, said at his memorial, standing<br />
near his casket. “But you taught me that life isn’t<br />
measured by the the breaths we take. It is measured<br />
by what we do with the moments we are<br />
given. In just 22 years, you lived a fuller life than<br />
someone who could have lived to be 100.”<br />
Life love<br />
Jonathan Chase Bisignano was born May 24,<br />
1993.<br />
“Twenty-five hours of labor,” Angela said.<br />
“Jonathan took his sweet time coming out the<br />
birth canal. In hindsight, it was probably a prelude<br />
for coming attractions. Jonathan was determined<br />
to do things his way.”<br />
Jon cont. on page 32<br />
<strong>Nov</strong>ember 10, <strong>2016</strong> • Easy Reader / <strong>Beach</strong> magazine 31