Holy Sonnet XX: Death, Be Not Proud

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadful, for thou are not so;

For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow

Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,

Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,

And soonest our best men with thee do go,

Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.

Thou'art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,

And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,

And poppy'or charms can make us sleep as well

And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?

One short sleep past, we wake eternally,

And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

 - John Donne

"Moon Landing" from Steve

Steve, like most IT guys, loved science. Loved science-fiction, too. Don't get me started on his obsession with asking pilots if they ever saw UFO's while flying planes. Got to a point I was scared to have us sit in an airport too long for fear he'd go pestering all the incoming pilots. But he'd send me all sorts of articles to read or burst out in normal conversation with some weird pieces of arcane information. He could hold a piece of information in his head in ways that perplex me to this day. He was a walking encyclopedia. He was constantly teaching me things.

But what I enjoyed most was when the information coincided with stories from his past. His childhood. Steve didn't need the nightly newsman to tell him it was the 40th anniversary of walking on the moon. He had written this earlier in the week and waited to post it. Just one of those pieces of arcane information in his head waiting to burst out at the appropriate time.

July 20, 2009

I was 6 years old when we landed on the moon 40 years ago today.

My parents let me stay up late that night to watch Neil Armstrong take his historic steps, and to me that was as big a deal as the steps themselves. I want to say it was about 10:15 at night when it happened and even at 6 I knew it was a big deal, but at that age could I fully grasp what exactly was going on?

There were clues. My dad fought in World War II, and had seen it all or so it seemed, but he too paused on a work night to watch the TV in the living room with the rest of his sons. I noticed that. Mom kept telling me that I would always remember that day, and that I would tell my children about it. She was half right: I have no children, so I'm telling all of you. My grandmother, Bombina, was terrified. She was convinced that the moon would fall from the sky if they landed on it. "Vinny, why do they HAVE to go???" she would plead with my father.

The picture wasn't very good but that didn't bother me. The only thing that ever play well on that TV were cartoons so who cared. It was 1969. I was used to bad pictures on TV. Disturbing images of helicopters and soldiers broadcast like a blurry surrealistic nightmare. Maybe I didn't comprehend it all, but somehow I knew enough. I know this because it didn't escape me that the ship was called the Eagle, or that it landed in a place called the Sea of Tranquility. I knew the future when I saw it, and I saw hope in my family's eyes that night.

1969 was the year I became aware. I was aware of the Mets, and found a hero in George Thomas Seaver. I knew who Joe Namath was, and I knew who Willis Reed was. I knew what Viet Nam was and I knew my oldest brother was a soldier. I knew grandma Bombi had nothing to worry about, the moon was going to stay right where it was. And I knew that Neil and Buzz stood in the confines of the Sea of Tranquility 250,000 miles away and it all made perfect sense.

36 Months (Three Years)

... 36 Questions I'd Like To Ask...

1. When you got on bended knee and said "I've waited for you my whole life," what followed that? Everything becomes a blank for me except the internal dialog of "ohmygawd, ohmygawd, ohmygawd."
2. What was the conversation you had with my father when you called to ask him permission to marry me? Dad's gone now too, so I can't ask him.
3. What ever happened to that baseball card you used to carry around in your wallet?
4. What was your favorite memory of your father?
5. How old were you when your father died? I always say 20 because I can't remember your exact age.
6. What was your father's funeral like? I can't separate that story from all the shenanigans of other family funerals. I wish you'd been here to tell me about it again when my father died.
7. How did your mother react to being a widow? I never asked. It simply never occurred to me. I feel horrible I never asked her or you about that time in her life.
8. What was your favorite memory of your mother?
9. Who was it that as a toddler, tried to push your mother out of the second story window she was washing?
10. What was your earliest memory?
11. Who was your first kiss and what was that moment like?
12. Where else did you want to travel, besides Italy, in the whole wide world?
13. Did I wake you up every night when I crawled into bed and kissed the scar on your back? You always made a happy little squeak but I never knew if you were conscious of it.
14. Did it ever annoy you that when I couldn't sleep I'd drape my body over yours and then fidget for an hour before finally nodding off?
15. What is the sauce recipe? I can't remember all the parts any more and can't find where we may have written it down.
16. Should I have asked to come see your band practice? I thought I'd be in the way so I always stayed home.
17. Where is the Italian restaurant we went to after you asked me to marry you? I've looked and looked and can't find it.
18. Where did you buy Frosty Paws for the dog? I've run out and can't find them anywhere.
19. Is that extra guitar in the shed the old crappy one my father gave you or one from your childhood?
20. Why is it we never went bike riding together? It's not like we didn't have enough bikes.
21. Where are all our old e-mails from when we were dating? I know you saved them somewhere.
22. What was your favorite book?
23. What was your favorite movie? I can list several but don't know which topped the list.
    
24. What was your favorite song?
25. What was your favorite trip you took with your cousin Frank?
26. What was your favorite trip we ever took?
27. What did you do with all love notes I'd put in your lunches, especially the ones with the count down to our wedding? I know you saved them but I still haven't found the hiding spot.
28. Do you regret not spending more time with your family, the way I do?
29. Would you have thought me a nag if I had badgered you in to seeing a doctor? I always believed it was better to have less time together and be happy than to have more time together and be miserable. Now I wonder if that was a bad decision on my part.
30. What was your biggest regret in life?
31. What was your biggest joy in life?
32. If there was one thing you could do over, the same or differently, what would have it been?
33. Was there anything I kept that you would have wanted to be given to someone after you died?
34. Did you send me all those double rainbows every time I stepped outside to cry that first week after you died or was that just the over-imagination of a traumatized mind?
35.  Did I do it all the way you would have wanted?
36. Can you see me, and if so, are you proud of me? 

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“Oh, I miss so many things… I miss his voice. I miss his voice telling me he loves me”

-  Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

From Where You Are - Lifehouse

I miss the years that were erased
I miss the way the sunshine would light up your face
I miss all the little things
I never thought that they'd mean everything to me
Yeah I miss you
And I wish you were here

"Father's Day" - from Steve

Doc was one of Steve's closest friends not in the family. Being Italian, a friend not in the family quickly becomes family. Doc was what I would call  "a brother from another mother". In light of this father's day posting maybe it should be "a brother from another father".

When Steve died, I mistakenly phoned Doc after midnight. I had no idea of the time, being entirely out of my mind with shock and grief. All I felt was a desperation to get a hold of those who loved Steve and was loved by Steve. I can't imagine waking from a deep sleep to take that call. But Mike took that call, stayed calm and made some additional calls on my behalf. He stood tall exactly where Steve would have for him had the tables been reversed.

About a year later, Mike came to Richmond for work. He took me out to one of Steve's favorite restaurants. A place Steve and I always took out of town visitors or to celebrate special occasions. And while we spoke of Steve now and again, mostly we spoke of mundane every day topics. We were both trying to stand tall in Steve's place for each other, making an awkward mess of it in the process.

I haven't seen or heard from Doc since that dinner. I sent him the lucite encased Super Bowl ticket which Steve saved these many years. While I had heard the stories written below many times, I knew Steve would have wanted Mike to have the heft of those shared memories. Something to hold in hand of the times they shared with pride.

I wish I could do that for each and every person Steve held dear in his life.

June 19, 2010

June 20th is my best friend not named Karen’s birthday. When I was in High School and for many years thereafter Mike Lozano and I shared many an adventure as we grew from 14 year old boys into the first incarnations of the men we are today.

Mike and I met in sophomore year at Archbishop Molloy, in the fall of 1977. I don’t know how we avoided each other for freshman year, we were on the same academic track, but needless to say when we finally met we became good friends. Mike was always a little smarter than me. He worked a little harder and got better grades. I was more of the “disassociated artist’ type. I never studied, never worked, and got passing grades much to my parent’s consternation (they had this “valedictorian or bust” attitude that I still don’t quite get. Once, my dad beat the snot out me for bringing home an 86 average)

Our friendship however really took off in college when we both discovered bars. This was more of a bad thing for me than Mike, who as I mentioned was always a little smarter than me. Doc as we now called him knew when to party and knew when to study. I on the other hand (who Doc now called “Wildman”) knew absolutely nothing about when to study. All the time was a good time to party, and being at NYU in the heart of Greenwich Village during the post-punk new wave era was probably not the most conducive environment for focusing on my academics. By 1983 I dropped out.

Doc finished Syracuse University in 2.5 years (OK, he was A LOT smarter than me), took a half a semester off, and started Mt. Sinai medical school while I had gotten some steady work in various mailrooms around the city. We still partied and drank, and for several years I was proud to subsidize our good times. Doc became an ER Doctor and married a beautiful woman named Tania, who I might add is smarter than the two of us (Tania went to Yale and is an Endocrinologist). For a while they lived in New York but eventually they moved to Tampa where they live today.

I wish I could tell you all of the stories and adventures we shared, but I can’t. One of the conditions of sobriety is to walk away from the people, places, and things that you knew when you drank and most of my stories about Doc start off “So one night Doc and I were out drinking…”. I can’t tell those stories any more, but there is one story I can tell...

Doc is one of the most decisive, intelligent people you will ever meet, but when it came to picking his favorite football team he couldn’t. I always thought he was a Jets fan, but when he moved to Tampa he became a Bucs fan, and when I questioned this his reply was something along the lines of “I really don’t have a favorite football team”.

Hmmm.

So I told him about the Green Bay Packers. Here’s a football team that was made for the Doc. They have a rich history. They are successful. They are owned by the people of Green Bay. Green Bay is about as different from New York City as different can be. Within days Doc was coming back to me with facts that I didn’t know (did I mention he’s somewhere between a little and a lot smarter than me?) “Did you know that if the team gets sold, all of the proceeds have to go to the local American Legion Post??” he gleefully exclaimed in one phone call. It didn’t hurt that we had Brett Favre on the team, and this was 1995 Brett Favre, so Doc became a Packers fan.

And the next year they went to the Super Bowl and so did we.

When the Packers made it to Super Bowl XXXI Doc immediately called and said “We’re going”.

“But I can’t afford it” I said.
“Don’t worry, I’ll pay for it” said Doc.
“But I’ll never be able to pay you back”.
“Don’t worry about it, I’ve got it” said Doc
“I have to pay you back”.
“Don’t worry, I’ve got it. It’s my way of saying thanks” said Doc, at this point getting annoyed. “Look, I’ve always wanted to be able to do this for my friends”, and that I understood. We came from the same place, me and the Doc, and he had made it out.

Doc took me to the Super Bowl in New Orleans and we watched Brett Favre win his only championship. That was a dream come true, and I have the ticket stub to prove it.

If I’ve never said thank you as I should have for that adventure then please allow me to do it now.

Thank you Mike.

A lot has changed since that day in 1996. I started changing my drinking habits, and Doc went on with his life. We grown apart over time and distance, but never so far that one can’t pick up the phone any day and call the other. Oh, and when I got married Doc and his family were there. He and Tania and their children Jackie and Vickie (who is my godchild) made the trip to Vegas. Jackie and Vickie stood as our flower girls and bowled with us in celebration that afternoon.

There’s a lot for me to think about today. I thought about writing about my Dad, but I think about him enough, and he knows how much I love him even if he did beat the snot out of me for bringing home an 86 average. Also? I’m tired of reflecting on the dead for now. This world is for the living. Here’s to the Doc, husband, father, and my friend always. Happy Fathers Day!

PS…
I can’t post this without wishing a happy Fathers Day to Miguel Lozano, Sr., who is Doc’s dad and was always a second dad to me. Mr. Lozano is a typical Puerto Rican man: he is strong and proud and of few words. When I met Mr. Lozano in 1977 our conversations would go like this:

Steve: Hi Mr. Lozano.
Mr. Lozano: >

It was the strangest noise I’d ever heard. In the first three years I knew him, the only actual words he ever said to me were this one time when he said: “Move your car”. I had no idea why he wanted me to move my car, nor did I think there was anything wrong with where I parked it, but I was ready to move it to the cemetery out back just so he wouldn’t have to see it ever again. I don’t think I ever moved so fast in my life. Anyway, three years of this goes on and one day we are sitting on his living room couch together watching a Mets game and all of a sudden I hear this voice go “Jorgensen.” I looked around wondering where it had came from but I really had no idea. Then I heard “Jorgensen. He’s good. Strong”

It was Mr. Lozano.

I looked around again to see who he was speaking to, but there was no one around. Then it dawned on me: he was talking to me. I remember thinking “Holy crap, he wants to have a conversation. Now what”? You know those old western movies, the way the Indians would talk? That was me. “Yes. Jorgensen. Good. Strong. Power hitter”.

It was Mr. Lozano’s way of letting me know I passed the test.

Happy Fathers day Dad. Give Mom and big hug and kiss from her wayward son.

Don't FUCK with WIDOWS...

I saw a version of this on Facebook but it didn't feel exactly right. It had a happy robin-egg blue background and not enough swearing. I like my version better. More black. More swearing.

Here's the thing... as I creep up on the three year mark of Steve's death, I realize more and more how much was burned away from me as I struggled to find the will to continue living. In other words, the amount of fucks I give about any given anything, has been drastically reduced. And the amount of fucks I gave before Steve died was fairly limited to start with.

And having survived that pain, there's not much more the world, or anyone in it, can do to make me blink.

But the people and experiences I love? I love them all with more depth and breadth than I ever imagined possible. Surviving widowhood has burned me down to a more concentrated self. I know who I am. I know what I love.

That's right. I'm a widow. And I know how to bury people.