i know this is very long, but i want to invite you all to join me in a cigar today/tonight in honor of my parents, humberto and gina.
before i tell you abut them, i want to take a moment to ask for your support... i found out today that i might have to have my left big toe amputated soon. not that big of a deal, but it really just slammed me down today. i watched my dad's legs disappear bit by bit -- first a toe, then a foot and so on. so to find this out on today of all days really kind of threw me for a loop. if you're the praying kind, please keep me in your prayers for the next week or so?
thanks,
sicilian tony
i never knew that when i read shakespeare in high school and learned the phrase "beware the ides of march" (march 15) how i would come to beware and dread it indeed.
both of my parents died on this day, 3 years apart. my mom passed on 15 march, 1991. my dad passed on the same day in 1994. today is the 10th anniversary of his death.
i moved back in to take care of them when their health failed. i was with mom in the room in an indy hospital where she died after being life-flighted in. after back surgeries, neurosurgery, QUAD bipass heart surgery and too many strokes to keep track of, her struggle ended there after all heroic measures had failed. even though she was out of it and her eyes cloudy, i got to say goodbye, and that's some kind of comfort.
my father and i dreaded each anniversary of her death. his own health was failing, and he lost first one then the other leg to diabetes. his heart wasn't doing so well either, and it seemed that he may have had the beginnings of alzheimers as well. 3 years after ma died, i awoke on the 15th of march listening for the familiar sounds of my dad's wheelchair squeaking into the kitchen for his morning coffee. silence. just the wind outside blowing cold and hard.
i got up to check on the old man and found him face down on the livingroom floor, already gone. i tried CPR but i knew that he wasn't going to be saved this time.
he was 16 years old and ran away to join the USMC, lied about his age to get in. the corps birthday is the one he used as his own all the rest of his life. he survived horrific wartime inn WWII, the south pacific, soloman islands. survived hurricanes, war wounds, malaria. and in the end it was his own body that cut him down.
you'd think that after 10-13 years, this would just be an ordinary day. a little sad perhaps, but... time's passed, memories fade. i don't know what it is, though, but every year around this time i get into the same kind of numbed out funk. it's like the memory of how it felt to lose them both on this same sucky day just comes up as an almost PHYSICAL memory.
we didn't have a great time of it, my parents and i, when i was growing up. that's a huge understatement. but i have to say that moving in with them to care for them when they were both hurting and vulnerable -- it's the best thing i ever did. i got to know them all over again. i got to know them as human beings with all the frailty and grandness that entails. i got to forgive them for not being the parents i wanted; they got to forgive me for not being the son they wanted.
i got to learn how to genuinely LOVE them.
and now that they're gone, that is such a precious thing to carry with me. when i moved out at the age of 16 (graduated h.s. early), i could not IMAGINE myself saying that i love them and i miss them and i wish they were still with me. but if we're lucky in life, we find that even the most ugly wounds can heal, the most broken parts of us can heal -- and maybe even be stronger than before.
i'm 38 now. and i do love them. i do miss them. i wish they were still around, and i especially wish that i could sit down with my dad and hand him a Toraño 1916 to smoke and enjoy and listen to all his old war stories again.
in their memory tonight, i'll smoke the finest cigar i have, and i invite you all to do the same. they were both very human in good and bad ways, but they lived extremely difficult lives and still brought five kids into the world who are missing them greatly today. please join me this evening or whenever you can for a smoke in their memory... and in their honor... and perhaps in honor of your own as well. if you don't get on well with your parents, i wish for you the peace i found with mine. if you do, and they're still alive, give them a call -- just because you can.
semper fi, papa. ti amo, mama, e il dio li benedice.
