Stories

Written 5/22-5/26  

Fifteen years together and I never told Justin the story of where and how my parents met. If you watch the show, The Office, there’s an episode where Pam and Jim realize they’ve told each other everything and the camera just lingers in the awkward silence as each becomes sad and their focus trails off in opposite directions. Fifteen years, and as you can tell...I’ve still got plenty. 

They met in the sand dunes. Growing up, a group of kids from their neighborhood would all hang out together and find places to be kids away from anyone who might tell them not to. If you have ever been surrounded by sand dunes, especially in the middle of a suburban town, you feel like you’re all of a sudden transported to the moon. They would meet on the weekends and get a running start to jump and see who could get the farthest. It was mostly boys trying to prove they weren’t afraid to scrape their shins or land in a way that could break something. My dad had jumped further than anyone else that day, except for my mom. She bested him. 

Later, she was walking by his house and he turned to his sister and said, “I’m going to marry her someday.”

You know who had stories, though? My dad. He had so many good ones. He went to a catholic school and would torture the nuns. I think he once opened a bunch of mustard packets and put them on one of their chairs. In elementary school, he also got the guy mowing the lawn to run over everyone’s shoes. I guess, for some reason, students would leave their shoes outside and he covered them all with grass clippings. I don’t think he meant for them to get run over. I think he was just trying to hide them. But still. 

He wasn’t just a miscreant though. He worked very hard. He worked with his dad and brothers, and later my brothers would work with him. He loved his family. He loved me and my sister. I have felt truly adored by two people in my life and he is one of them. I was born on Father’s Day and he named me. Without my mother’s input. 

You couldn’t come into the house, either from school or when coming home from being out with friends, and not give him a hug and a kiss. He loved when me and my sister wore dresses. One day, my sister was feeling down and he pulled me off to the side and asked me to take her out to get her the dress I wore on Easter to help cheer her up. I can’t begin to tell you how hard it was to not have him at my wedding. I walked down the aisle with my oldest brother, danced my father-daughter dance with my middle brother, and my youngest brother walked with my mom. I know he would have loved my dress. He built a good family. 

He grew a spectacular garden, too. His tomato plants were the tallest I’d ever seen. It could just be that I was a kid and they towered over my head, but I’m pretty sure that the random Italian man who would come into our yard to pillage for produce for his fresh gravy was a testament to my dad’s green thumb. 

I was sitting in the living room during summer break once, watching cartoons. My dad was at work and my mom was in the other room. I’d sensed movement in my peripheral through the open screen door adjacent to my dad’s garden. An older gentleman, with a basket in hand looked up and waved. He had a thick accent as I could tell when I responded with a polite (but nervous) “Hello” and he responded back, saying, “I’m Jerry, you fathah has the best tomatoes.” I smiled and said, “Yeah” with a little laugh before swiftly walking into the kitchen with a long, “Moooooommmm….” She explained that my dad met him on a job once and that he would give him pointers for growing his garden. When he got too old to do it himself, my dad paid him back by telling him to come over and take whatever he needed, whenever he needed. 

When he was sleeping you could not wake my dad up. He worked either on a roof or stood putting siding on a house all day and when he got home he was tired. There is tremendous strain on your legs and knees in this kind of work and he needed to rest to be able to get up the next day and do it again. He would make it clear that he may be napping in the living room and sometimes you would just know because he would swear at some of his workers in his sleep. And if you did wake him up, well, you were the new subject in his spray of profanities. It was more funny than anything else and sometimes, if you laughed, or did something weird, you could break him out of his sudden frustration. 

Once, later at night, I was about 15 or 16, I tried so hard to quietly get the phone from out of the living room. When I removed the portable from the receiver it made a click and I panicked and dropped it which immediately woke the sleeping giant. I yelped and ran before he could fully register who or what and I hid in the shower. I heard him very quietly looking around outside the bathroom. As he got closer, I realized he had no idea it was me and thought someone may have broken into our house. I probably should have calmly revealed myself, but instead I stayed silent and just waited until he pulled back the curtain. I started to laugh and he yelled, “Fuck!”, his hands on his knees as if I had punched him in the stomach. It took him a minute, but he started to laugh, too. 

One of my favorite things about him was how he would sit in the kitchen with the lights off at night sometimes. He’d rest the stereo against the screen in the open window on summer nights, playing Bob Dylan while smoking his cigarettes and drinking a few beers by himself. Unless I came to observe and sit with him. He loved his songs like I love mine.  

“May you build a ladder to the stars and climb on every rung. And may you stay forever young.”         

My dad believed in god and wanted to instill a sense of faith in his kids. We went to church and Sunday School. That doesn't mean we went easy, though. There was usually a fight or two between my dad and three older brothers on Sunday mornings but we’d load into the Crown Victoria and head down the Pike anyway. Midway through mass, my oldest brother would take out candid photos of us and pass them down the line and they would laugh almost like when Jerry put the Pez dispenser on Elaine's lap during the quiet piano concert. Their backs going up and down in the pews. I was too young to understand what they were laughing for, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t embarrass my dad on occasion, too. 

Once, before I was old enough to receive communion, I had told him that I would only go to church if I could get a cracker. I understand this sounds blasphemous, but I was a kid and didn’t know better. It bothered me that there was a rule that I was too young to go up with my brothers and dad, and I had to stay back with my mom, the “dirty rotten protestant” as she would call herself and laugh. After probably fighting with my brothers to get us all ready to go, I think he agreed just to shut me up and get me in the car. Little did he know, I am stubborn like my mother and fully expected him to ask the priest for an extra to give to his daughter. And he said he would, so…why would I believe otherwise? When this poor man got back to his seat, after kneeling and giving the sign of the cross, I saw his hands were empty and yelled out, “You lied to me!”. I was always a nearly touching index finger and thumb away from having to sit in the cry room with the babies. 

The rules. I just never understood some of them. I still don’t.        

All in all, my dad was just honest. He’d get frustrated and you would know, he would care and you would know. He was there for anyone who needed him, probably to a fault. He helped his nephews who needed to try to get on their feet again after getting into various forms of trouble. He would help out his friends who would come over with their heads down, embarrassed to be asking for money and promising they would pay him back. I’m sure they also helped him the best they could when he needed it, too. 

He didn’t like to see people upset. I once came home after finding out a boy I liked had liked one of my friends instead, and he gave me advice that I would hold onto like gold. Well, most of it, anyway. He told me that I should just brush it off with his hand sweep gesture and told me that love would find me and to not worry at all. He said it was important that I not think about it and to just let what is supposed to happen, happen. Sometimes I fight with the last part of his advice and I’m learning that I need to heed it. 

He had way too much pride. My dad never cried. I saw him a little puffy eyed once after his mom died. He had gone into the garden and stayed until dark. When he came in we all knew and didn’t mention it. It was his biggest and most tragic flaw.        

One of the best stories I have ever heard, though, was how he met the Bishop appointed to Providence from 1972-1997. I won’t tell the story, I’ll keep this one for me and my family, but you better believe it’s good. 

The Bishop grew to love my dad. He personally baptized me and my brothers and would make house visits from time to time and at Christmas most years. We actually spent a few days at his mansion that looked and felt like a large church on the ocean over by where RockyPoint amusement park used to be. I remember waking up and “playing the piano” that was in one of the grand halls, and feeling proud when The Bishop told me my music sounded beautiful. I was just smashing keys and making sound...very early in the morning.      

My dad committed suicide in 2009 on the Monday after Christmas, very early in the morning. A set of rosary beads were found on his coffee table that he had been praying with. One of the biggest rules is that you do not take your own life. Although suicide is considered a mortal sin, the Bishop would read the mass at my father’s funeral and re-tell the story of how they met from his perspective. 

Over the course of almost 30 years working, my dad’s knees had worn down and caused him a lot of pain. He was taking vicodin, and over time, became dependent and needed more to do the same job. It cost him more and more money and he began taking some from jobs to sustain. He was “robbing Peter to pay Paul” as some would say and the phrase would not sit well with me and still doesn’t because my dad wouldn’t willingly rob anyone. He was not well. 

He’d have a conversation with my mom about a month before he died and they would decide that he would need to go to a rehab facility to try to get him off of the vicodin. He would tell her that no one was allowed to visit him at “the hospital” and I would continually call and push, not having it, until she finally gave in and told me where he really was.

When he was home after, he thought about the financial predicament he found himself in and the week before Christmas, he made calls to representatives to check on his life insurance policy. They called back asking if William was available the morning after he died. I answered. I told them that he had passed away, the phrase sounding wrong for the way in which he passed. I’ll never forget the pause on the other end of the line.   

I commented on Christmas Eve that year, just days before he died, in front of everyone that he’d lost weight and that he looked good. He flexed his muscles and smiled so big and we all laughed. That is my last memory of him.             

The Bishop, I would later find out, was involved in accusations regarding sexual misconduct with minors. He has consistently denied these accusations. I do not know what happened, nor would I know what to make of a false accuser or someone who used their power to solicit children. I just know what that man did for my family and the statement he made in conducting mass for my dad who had committed “mortal sin”. I know how much it would have meant to him. I read through the court deposition for the earliest accusation against him. He has not been convicted of any accused crime. Heeding my dad’s advice, I’ll just let what’ll happen, happen.     

I did read, though, that he opposed legislation for homosexuals. He said, "Homosexual acts are contrary to God's command and contrary to his purpose in creating sex. To give support to this proposed legislation may easily be interpreted as supporting the homosexual lifestyle." This, I do know, makes absolutely no sense to me. It’s these rules that I, personally, cannot get past. I don’t know exactly what I believe in, but I know for certain that any omnipresent and ever loving god wouldn’t have these rules and prevent happiness and peace from being granted to all. I pray for him and for people who blindly follow like-minded thought. I pray that these archaic beliefs be snuffed out sooner rather than later and that people who have been taught wrong are not held accountable for beliefs imposed on them by people they thought were teaching them “god’s command”.  

My dad learned to be too proud somewhere. I think he knew some of the rules were wrong, though. I mean, he married and loved a dirty rotten protestant. But he prayed to this god before he died. Then he went outside, bent down on the knees that did him in and took his life with a shotgun.  

I cannot believe that he was not accepted. I can’t and I won’t.  

We spread his ashes down at one of his childhood hideouts, set back in the woods; away from rules. He called it Big Island. It was an area where he had built forts and smoked pot and drank with his friends and my mom. He told my mom and brother that when he died, this is where he wanted his ashes spread. I read this poem that day:  

When he went blundering back to God, 

His songs half written, his work half done, 

Who knows what paths his bruised feet trod, 

What hills of peace or pain he won?

I hope God smiled and took his hand, 

And said, “Poor truant, passionate fool!

Life’s book is hard to understand:

Why couldst thou not remain in school?”

-Charles Hanson Towne

I would follow the rules for this God. 

Three months before my dad died he had asked me to go for a ride with him to the pharmacy. I had stopped by after class one night to say “Hi” and to pick something up, I forget what. I was upstairs and he was down and he lightly pleaded with me to go. But I was tired and told him I just wanted to go home and go to bed. That ride was all I thought about in the wake of his death. What I wouldn’t give for a 10 minute carride to the fucking pharmacy. 

Now I take rides when the people I love ask. Justin knows this now and uses it, but never in a manipulative way. He does it for me. He knows when I need to get out of my own head and just go somewhere and to be distracted; to be in a different place. After reading my last post he knew I was still in it; perseverating. We grabbed our helmets and went for a ride on his motorcycle. I didn’t know he had a destination in mind. 

It was kind of weird, he had slowed his motorcycle seemingly in the middle of the street. I noticed a clearing off to the side and from my vantage point, it looked like there might have been an overlook. I hopped off the bike, not knowing that was actually where Justin planned to take me. He had discovered this spot while riding with his cousin days before. I thought I was discovering something new on my own. As I walked up, I saw the foreign, lunar looking landscape. I turned to him and asked, “Did I ever tell you where my parents met?” 

Justin wonders if writing these stories, continuing on a loop in this, is the best move. I’m still not sure yet, but I have so many, and I am incredibly driven to write them down; to get them out and to exhale deeply. I have the time right now in the current pandemic. The world has slowed and provided the space be reflective and to try to figure things out. Part of me wonders if I’m just smashing keys and making sound, though. 

There’s a song written by Brandi Carlile and I loved it immediately when it came out. It’s called “The Story”. I remember listening to it, loving the simple lyric “I was made for you” and thinking about Justin, knowing that I was made for him and vice versa. I can’t explain why concisely (clearly, that’s not my strong suit either), but I think in these stories I allude to it enough. We just balance each other out very well. 

We met in 2005. I had walked into a friend’s house for a party in their basement. It was a raised ranch and there were a set of stairs going down and a set going up. His back was turned to the door; he was going up. Then I came in and he saw me with my friend, Zach, and rerouted his destination to join me in going downstairs to the party. 

Our first ride. It was unspoken, but I asked him to join me.   

Another lyric in the song is, “But these stories don’t mean anything, when you’ve got no one to tell them to”. Maybe he prefers that I would just tell them to him. But stories are meant to be shared and I think it’s beneficial to communicate around the heavier things in life; to not masquerade and ignore the dark. I want to participate in life wholeheartedly and know that I set that example for others. I know he fully gets this and is why he is so supportive and helped me to create a website and blog dedicated to sharing. Plus, not to boast, but our story is beautiful and when held up against the shit I’ve been thorough, that we’ve been through, it just shows that it’s all so...worth it. If I’ve learned anything from my parents, it’s that “No one ever said life was going to be easy” (my mom) and that “love will come to you and it will be worth it”, (dad). Worth sharing.      

Oh. And rules...some of them suck and need to be broken.   

We were sitting and watching Patten Oswalt’s new stand up this past weekend. His wife died in 2016 and in his new special he talked about finding love again after his loss. He communicated his pain well and said that he was fully resigned to living in “the gray”. But then he met “a poem of a woman” and the camera cuts to him, straight on, and he says, nearly yells, “When you see love, you run at it”. And I pictured my mom running after my dad at the sand dunes.  

This poem was read by a poem of a woman at my wedding:          

May you have the love only two can know 

May you go only where two as one may go 

May the sun set and rise in your bonded hearts 

And the moon never find you too long apart 

May you cherish each other’s dreams as your own 

And turn stumbling blocks into stepping stones 

May you brave life’s mountains and miles together 

May there be no storm your love cannot weather 

May you be lovers and allies and friends 

May your souls’ conversation never end

May you capture on earth what’s in heaven above 

May your hearts know the rapture of an uncommon love 

One last quote from one of the greatest: 

“I’d rather live fifty years like a lion than a hundred like a chicken”. 

-William A. Pilkington 9/10/59-12/28/09

*Forever Young: https://youtu.be/Frj2CLGldC4