Courage, love, grandsons, family kept Ann going until she couldn't any more; My brother's widow and best friend didn't let cancer defeat her easily

Ann looked from me to the bed where my brother had nodded off with sister morphine in the ICU at the massive midtown Nashville hospital.

He'd just had one of his many parts replacements. I guess he had a dozen surgeries to replace head, shoulders, knees and toes -- hold it, that's a nursery school song. Besides that, his head was fine until the end, but he had replacements and tuneups for hips, knees, elbows and other joints during his too-short 74 years on earth, most of them spent by Ann's side.  He'd also had prostate cancer radiation-seed treatment and was diabetic. 

Most of the joint replacements were required because of a violent life as an offensive football tackle, from the Grand Rapids (Michigan) junior Rockets to the Deerfield (Illinois) High Warriors to the Iowa State Cyclones. Actually, briefly I became even more violent when I took my turn at football, but decided I didn't like it, as I was a Give Peace a Chance guy and the coach was a sadistic asshole who honed my All-State brother's career by beating him over the helmet with a baseball bat.  Well, I'll get back to that topic some other day. I eventually told the coach to go to hell, or, knowing me, something anatomically specific.

Back to the hospital, where Ann always sat, with a smile or perhaps crocheting or knitting (I don't know the difference nor do I care to learn. I'm old, you know if you know me.) by Eric's bed. If he awakened, she wanted to be there to talk to him. 

"In sickness and in health" is how the preacher man put it more years ago than I care to remember (or know at all) when they wed. Actually, I can't remember specific occurrences and their dates as my 73 years have turned to a fast-paced blur of good times, depression, laughter, love, inebriation, sobriety, good friends, dead friends, mourned family and an increasing number of funerals. 

Ann Ghianni's funeral September 27 may have been the saddest of them all. Perhaps that's hyperbolic, as my brother's death broke my heart and will, and I still dial his number when seeking counsel. If he ever answers, I might be startled but I'll be glad to answer his standard "What's happening in the world of high adventure?" I miss my parents, grandparents and dead cousins every day. And that's not counting my cats and dogs.  Hell, the little catfish bottom-feeder from my aquarium tank in my Iowa State dorm room lived for many years after the betta fish and blue gourami died. He was a damn nice fish, buried with honors in my parents' back garden.

Ann and her husband Eric, inseparable in life, have reunited in death, according to belief and hope.

But Ann, who had been fighting vicious, rabid, full-on cancer for more than two years, wanted to live more than anyone I've known. She didn't complain about the sometimes thrice-weekly treatments my wife took her to for much of her battle. She missed her husband -- "he was supposed to be here to take care of me," she said, weeping eyes actually glowing with love when she spoke of Eric.    

Anyway, I was right there near the altar, or whatever they call them in the Methodist church, and by my brother's side, Ann's wedding ring looped desperately on my clammy pinky. If I recall correctly (never a sure thing), I was in a chocolate-brown tuxedo (I'm colorblind, so it could have been as purple as Prince or Barney). I was the best man (of course ... and he was mine later.) There was a bit of deja vu in both lives, but that's not important here.

I'd put it as somewhere near 40 mostly beautiful years they were together. At Ann's funeral, their daughters, Maria and Ana, said that Ann and Eric were as one, a single unit of love when they went through life. Love kept them together and mostly arm-in-arm and joyous for all those decades. I like most funerals, and I've covered many for newspapers during my career. I've watched as cities said goodbye to raped and murdered teenagers. I've been there when Dolly sang "I Will Always Love You" to Porter's casket.  I consoled Johnny Cash when he sat next to June's casket and hugged Tom T. and Dixie Hall when they said goodbye to their good friend, Cash. Of course, the latter two, my dear friends, died, and I had to let them go as well. They gave me a carved, wooden angel from a trip to visit the Cashes in Jamaica. I keep that in my office, with Mardis Gras beads draped over her shoulders and sometimes wearing an autographed Lone Ranger mask.

I've never broken into tears and sobs until Ann's funeral, though. Mainly it was caused by the photo slideshow on the double screens. Most of the pictures featured Ann and Eric, smiling -- my brother being silly and at least once sticking out his tongue -- arm-in-arm. Ann was my connection to Eric, who died 18 months ago or so. Now she is gone, too. That wonderful and warm couple, made for each other, will never smile at me again, gentle reassurance as I continue warring with life's assholes and bullies and setbacks. I'll miss that warmth, since I'm planning on 30 more years before I enter the ether or become a shooting star or whatever comes next.  My fondness for funerals does not include my own, though I suppose I'll attend unless everyone else precedes me in death.

My tears were fueled by remembrances of "Mommy and Daddy" by their daughters, who did their best to hold it together at the service. I cried, but I was so damn proud of them.  Then Ann's brothers, Neal and Matt, and Matt's wife, Victoria, and Ann's sister, Ginger, and nephew, Ben, conducted a service filled with music and upbeat Christian joy and heavenly promise. My cousin, Michelle, even felt the need to speak. I didn't.

I was watching and crying, Suzanne's hand clutching my own. I was quiet, not wailing, so if you didn't look me straight in the eyes, or see the Kleenex with which I was dabbing my red-stained baby blues, you'd not have known how desperately sad I was.

I thought -- as I watched the photo display playing on the church screens -- again to the time I stood by the altar, protecting the wedding ring Eric was going to slide on Ann's finger.

Later, the bride's dad, a fine fella named Horace Davenport, told me he always could recognize me from the way I walked, a bit lopsided, John Wayne-like, down the aisle that night and whenever he saw me after. My recent back surgery -- a full rebuild of my spine, from neck to butt -- finally has me walking a bit more steadily, currently with a "temporary" walker and without the years of constant pain. Of course, any friends of mine, most of whom are long dead, as noted above, remember when I walked less than steadily into the post-midnight mist. But that's another story involving Tork's Pub and a lust for life that later had me listening to Clarksville cops spill their secrets as they bought me scotch at a place called Camelot. Unsteady wandering wasn't always caused by the scoliosis and stenosis and arthritis that has plagued me for decades, ending only with an eight-hour surgery this summer.  A prior two-hour surgery began the process by getting my neck straight.

As she waged mortal war, Ann found hope and light with her grandsons, daughters, family. 

I remember well the summer day in 1987, when Eric, Ann and I split a few bottles of Bordeaux as they helped me sort out one of my few failures. They were mumbling semi-incoherent advice as our long day turned to night.

I think of Horace and his wife, Barbara, often, as they are faces I remember as I go through the roster of people I've loved but who died anyway. I did that again Saturday night as I lay, too sad to sleep, in my bed, thinking about those faces, from my father-in-law Glen to my dear Iowa pals Nardholm and Uncle Moose. I thought of Nola, my best friend Jocko's ex-wife (I was their best man, naturally, and they remained friends after the split), newsman Harold Lynch and my beloved News Brothers pal Scott "Badger'' Shelton, all fatal victims of cancer.  My cousin Marc -- who went to Camp Spikehorn with me and Eric and Marc's brother, Jeff -- would have turned 76 on the day of Ann's funeral. Cancer most foul murdered him years ago.

Anyway, I'm drifting away from that wedding, which was splendid, even though Eric's best buddy, Ed Yarbrough and others, permanently scarred the finish of Eric's metallic-light-blue Camaro by using shaving cream to write "Just Married" on the sides and trunk.  Eric wasn't angry, though. He was proud to drive that piece of signage around until he had a wreck much later, that ended that car. Eric was not a good driver, but he was a helluva brother and, from all reports, a dedicated husband, father, brother-in-law, uncle, grandfather and friend.

That bride was beautiful, a simple beauty not fully captured by the undertakers and corpse cosmetologists. I was proud to be in her wedding. For ensuing decades (remember, they all blur together), she brought bright smiles, comfort, sisterly advice and especially love, into my life. 

Later by many years, she brought those same qualities into the lives of my wife, Suzanne, and then my children, Emily and Joe, after they joined my life. She loved my kids as if they were her own, and Suzanne was her count-on sister in crime. As noted, Eric was my best man and always a damn nice guy.

Ann Davenport Ghianni, perhaps the sweetest person I've ever known and loved, died September 23, after that brutal two-year battle with cancer.  She was on the verge the day before, but that was her beloved's 76th birthday, so I think she held on so the daughters wouldn't merge a celebration of Daddy's birthday with Mommy's death.

I have a lot of great memories of Ann. And, even though she had been fighting escalating cancer eating away at her body, even after the docs told her they thought they got it all after her double-mastectomy and then found more ... and more, I didn't expect her to die. 

 At least not now.

She had grandchildren to love, beautiful daughters, sons-in-law, brothers, sister, nieces, nephews and a loving brother-in-law and his wife, hoping, some praying, and all sending the best wishes her way.  If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride, my Mom used to say before she died too young in 1999. (She was as old as my brother would have been September 22.)

One of the best memories that has stayed in my mind's shallow thoughts in the days since Ann died is the one noted at the top of this tale, where Ann sat by my brother's bedside, her love shining even as she worried.

"He was a little out-of-it yesterday, as he started coming around," she said, her smile broadening, pale cheeks reddening. 

"He said the nicest thing he ever said to me. He said 'Davenport, you're my best friend and I love you more than anything in the world.' "

"I hope he feels the same way when he's not on drugs," I said.

She laughed, because she knew, as much as I did, that Eric always told the truth, didn't know how to lie, even stoned on sister morphine with tubes protruding from his limbs. 

Eric, I should note, liked to call Ann by her maiden name.  He'd even refer to her as "Davenport" when he was talking to me in our frequent phone calls or our hamburger and tea (two bottles of beer for him) lunches at Brown's Diner. He, like all loving life partners, sometimes was irritated by her, but generally and most often was openly, vocally proud of the fact she had agreed to share his life.

His life ended about a year and a half ago. Infections in those artificial body joints, failing organs and a disturbingly befuddled staff of doctors didn't allow him to live. 

I was standing in the ICU room -- only two visitors were allowed at the same time -- back when Eric neared his death throes. Of course, Ann stayed in there, but Suzanne and I would take our turns with her. 

There'd been a Code Blue, doctors running through the hallways, and the subsequent application of heart paddles to jolt him back to life.  We were told to look the other way. They brought him back around, but docs said his body wouldn't withstand any more heart attacks and shock treatments.

"I don't think he's going to make it, Tim, do you?" There were no tears, just shock in Ann's eyes, as I put my arm over her shoulder. It wasn't the heavy arm of her soon-to-die love. I could only deliver a tentative hug, as she was, in my mind, at least, breakable. Even back then, the cancer had turned what had been a thick and healthy body into a thin and frail one. And the cancer, supposedly, was in retreat.

Cancer lies. Doctors lie worse.

As I stood there with her in the ICU, it was hard for me to agree her beloved, my big brother, wasn't going to make it.  I was sure he would die in the next few minutes, but all I could do is answer Ann's question with a nod and a muttered "no.''

He didn't.  We all stood in the ICU room and watched him die.

Ann left Eric's hospital that day in melancholy farewell after all of those years, all of those illnesses, all that selfless love.

"He was supposed to live, so he could take care of me," she said, perhaps her only selfish thought.  That was natural for her to think that way, as Eric had been there, taking her to and from doctors and lab facilities, helping her when the treatments made her sick. Shaving her head when gray-brown hair began to fall out.

They both were sure she would make it through. Together. Neither of them did. A double mastectomy, radiation, chemo, any kind of experimental therapy possible, extended her life by a matter of months.  Her diabetic body, riddled by cancer and the poisons used to combat it, finally succumbed after it was infected with Covid and pneumonia.

For Ann, the 18 months between Eric's death and her own slow demise were miraculous joy,  though. 

She was able to spend as many days and nights as possible with her grandsons, Emilio and Sabatino (Leo and Tony) at the Ghianni house on Binkley Drive and at daughter Ana and son-in-law Joshua's compact farm in a quiet section of Rutherford County.

She had to talk to the boys some about their late Papa in heaven. They missed him, but they clung to their Nonna, even more when she was forced, by illness, to stay in Ana's house on the farm. They never will find that dedicated, focused love again now that Nonna and Papa are gone.

My wife, Suzanne, who is a pretty damn good sort of person with a massive degree of faith I don't claim to match, tried her best for more than a year to fill in for Eric, taking Ann to her appointments, meeting with doctors, hearing about progress and deterioration. Taking notes and asking questions. They also took time to laugh. Suzanne and Ann were a sort of Thelma and Louise on those treatment days. I joined them once for lunch and felt like an intruder on those good times. 

"We had a lot of fun together," Suzanne reflected when Ann's siblings thanked her for spending so much time with their sister. 

That's what families do, of course.  Ann would have done all of that for her, for us, for my kids, if needed. If she had stayed alive.

My dad, Emilio Ghianni, died in 2019, 20 years, almost to the day, from the time my Mom died.

Suzanne, Ann, Eric and I tried to help take care of Dad, who lived by himself in a big house in Forest Hills. In addition to getting him to his doctor's appointments -- usually Suzanne took care of those -- there also were emergency calls.

My Dad fell sometimes, although he refused to move into a "facility" or a retirement village. He liked his independence. Unless blood started spewing from his latest fall and cut, spurring the late-night calls for help. 

Sometimes I'd take him to the hospital in the middle of the night. Other times, I'd just bandage him up.  

"I called you and Ann," he told me once, as I washed and bandaged a series of deep gashes  in his ancient, crispy skin. 

"That's good," I told him, as I looked around the kitchen whose floor looked like that of a slaughterhouse. "Because I don't do blood." 

Ann did. She arrived and mopped the blood off the floor and washed it down with peroxide. She didn't mind.

Anything for her family.

Not too many years before my brother died, he and Ann adopted a mutt named Lily from a shelter in Rutherford County.  "I'm not sure if I saved Lily's life or if she saved mine," Ann would say of the beautiful fuzzy dog who wouldn't let Ann out of her sight.

In the last year, when Ann was in and out of the hospital, Lily spent much of her time down on the farm in Rutherford County, joining the two dogs of Josh and Ana. Lily's living down there now, but I guess she's moving with Maria and Michael to Belfast, Northern Ireland, where he's a youth minister and she's a social worker.  "Give Ireland back to the Irish," I'll tease them.

Ann also had three cats, left by my brother, the cat man, who she loved.  She worried about them, though, as she was living for the day when a small mother-in-law cottage was finished on Josh and Ana's farm. Ann lived for that, as she knew she'd be around her grandsons. 

She worried, though, that she'd have to find new homes for the cats. It bothered her. One more heartache in a life that was disintegrating into defeat, despite her own gumption and determination.

Unfortunately, she didn't live long enough to figure that out. The cats remain in her house, the one that her husband had spent his life fixing up and loving, that she knew she'd be leaving soon, either for the still-unfinished cottage or the funeral home. 

She figured she'd be walking out. But she left by ambulance, and never returned.

Not only was the cancer spreading, she had contracted Covid somehow.  That led to the pneumonia that sent her to the ICU. When you spend your life in doctor's offices, you are bound to get sick and die, I suppose. 

I could not go down to the hospital and see her, as I'm relatively immobile from having my spine scrubbed and rebuilt three months ago.

But her daughters, Ana, the horse-riding farm girl from Rutherford County, and Maria, the social worker from Northern Ireland, stayed by her bedside. Sleeping and fretting and answering phone calls.

And crying. As life neared its end, the pneumonia and the Covid and the cancer made it impossible for Ann to speak.

But she could hear, and she could see.  Suzanne could go see her, so could my son, Joe. My daughter, Emily, called from her Los Angeles home and they exchanged "I love yous."

I note that I could not visit the hospital. So I called, I guess at least six times in her last day alive, trying to offer support to the girls, who I love like my own, and also to talk with Ann.

Maria or Ana would put the phone by Ann's ear and I could, on FaceTime, see the determined sparkle in her eyes as I spoke.

"I love you, Ann. You are the sweetest person I've ever known. You're a great mother, wife, grandmother, sister-in-law. Just hang in there and do what the doctors tell you."

She would try to move her lips, but nothing but the sound of the oxygen tubes made it through the telephone.

Each call I made I knew could be my last.

Then Maria called at about 5:30 a.m. September 23 to say her Mommy had died.

I looked out my kitchen window to see if there was a new shooting star out there. I barked something completely unacceptable at the heavens. 

One of the couple's great and final adventures, it turned out, was a visit to Northern Ireland and Ireland, where Ann and Eric visited Maria and Michael.
 

          

d 

While I was getting rebuilt, news reports of deaths of Sly and Brian had me shouting 'Boom-laka-laka boom' & wishing I could catch a wave in my room as I was missing in action and few noticed

 Boom-laka-laka boom…. Hell with it. I just wasn’t made for these times (Although I do hope that recent major, life-altering surgeries perhaps get me ready for times ahead.)   

And I’m not just talking about THESE times, as in the last few months when I’ve been Missing In Action from my News Brothers chronicles, public John Lennon worship and other ceremonial and benevolent duties. Hell, for a couple of weeks of that time, I lay in a fog and in constant pain while helicopters whirly-birded outside my window dropping off heart-attack victims, shredded motorcycle drivers, chainsaw casualties, victims of guitar duels and castrated serial killers. Or whatever. I found the 'copters amusing as I gazed in pain from the ghastly uncomfortable bed with its plastic anti-piss and blood-resistant cover and automatic torture controls that nurses use to keep you in your place. Literally. It actually was a nice place.

 I was busy having my neck and spine rebuilt, two operations separated by two-plus months because of a fiercely violent virus I contracted during pre-op before the second surgery, which then was delayed.  That ailment took me by surprise and really pissed me off. Afraid of an illness delaying what, to me, was life-or-death … cripple-or-walk … surgery, I had holed up in Da Basement since Christmas Eve.  Visitors must wear masks (or preferably use the phone or leave me alone.) 'Twas precaution wasted, as a vile and viral occurrence struck me down when I went into the waiting room for a February pre-op, days before my second (and most massive) surgery. Hordes of smelly patients and family members were playfully swapping flying phlegm. I figure I got sick there from someone’s boogers floating like invisible zeppelins, driven by a whole lotta love through the hot, still air. So, a late-February daylong rebuild-my-spine surgery (my neck discs had been overhauled and replaced in January) was put off until the next available date … late May.

 

I first ran into Brian Wilson and his brothers, cousin and their buddy, Al, one night after I made a miscalculation about the best way to get into a concert in Ames, Iowa. He's dead now. I interviewed him during my career and wanted to play in his sandbox.

In between the surgeries, and when I wasn’t too ill to make it to my office, I wrote here occasionally, acting like all is well in FlapjacksLand.  I didn’t talk about my health, because I figured no one really cared. Really, other than the occasional foray into my sick and twisted mind, for most of the last six months, I’ve been “missing” from my failed write-for-sanity exercises. Resounding silence here in this "brotherhood" taught me what I’d already figured was the case. Fortunately, my long-time sidekick, Rob “Death” Dollar – one of those I told about my surgery -- kept The News Brothers page alive and, at my request, kept my condition a secret from anyone except his best friend, Columbo. Not the one-eyed detective.  The lovely stray cat he’s adopted. Oh, I'm sure Rob told his Mom, who I love and who likes me very much, as she should. Just one more thing on second thought: He may have told the late Peter Falk, as well. Or our pal, The Lone Ranger, also deceased.

I only told a few people I was having the new spine and neck installed. I’m intensely private, though I used to run around in skin-tight, pink, tie-dyed long johns with my sidekick, Jocko. That was a long time ago, a half-century-plus. I still have the pink long johns—the rear end was torn off by a 6-foot-tall woman with red hair and a hungry heart (everybody’s got one, lay down your money and you play your part) -- in the bottom drawer with my high school letter sweater. "We are the Dingbats, mighty, mighty Dingbats." Hell, I’m 73. Long time since the Class of 69 -- including me in a burgundy tux and a girl who would ditch me when her ignorant, acne-covered college boyfriend came home -- danced to Baby Huey and The Babysitters at Lake Forest Country Club. I need to toss that refuse from a life nearly fully lived.  I will hang onto the yellow socks I wore on every test day since seventh grade, though …. Maybe wear them right on into the furnace or Metro garbage bin.  I know I’ll be wearing The Lone Ranger mask Clayton Moore (aka “Mr. Lone Ranger) autographed in the winter of 1983, my Working Class Hero  T-shirt and red Converse “Chucks.” Fifty-six years ago, those same style shoes were called “Jack Purcells’’ and we all had to have a pair for physical education (“gym class”).   And an extra-extra-large athletic supporter. I only got quick peeks at what the girls were wearing to protect their invisible scrotums.

Sylvester Stewart led one of the best, groundbreaking bands of all times. I was fortunate to see him play his organ. And I yelled "Ride, Sally, Ride." Some tall girl wanted me to add some bottom, if you read on. He's dead now.

While on the subject of the thrilling days of yesteryear I’m sure the tall Iowa State sophomore with the flaming hair and hungry heart is the one who exposed my scarcely covered cheeks that winter night when Jocko and I showed up at the Residence Hall Fair "Alice in Wonderland'' booth, staged by Hanson House (the floor on which we lived) and a girls’ dorm house I have forgotten. Willow? Rosa? Nellie? Whoa! I do remember some things (a surprise for anyone who was with us.) We were representing some of Alice’s friends and comrades in a colorful booth we built in a campus-wide coed competition. The rabbits had fur, rather than pink long johns, in Lewis Carroll's true tale. Red was tall, but of course you may remember Carroll's Alice was 10 feet tall, according to my rock heartthrob, Gracey Slick. Feed your head.  We won the competition for best booth. Or maybe it was best rabbits talking backwards. But the Red Queen understood.

 “Tim Ghianni: You haven’t changed a bit in 50 years,” the tall woman, signing her name only as “Red” wrote on Facebook a couple of years ago while she was sitting with other female alums at an Iowa State football game. It was a compliment. She was proud that I’d escaped the adult humdrum and was spending my time writing in Da Basement. Grew old, not up.  Surprising to many, I did not die before I got old, as Roger Daltrey predicted. I just never got old. I have many friends, however, who followed Roger's advice, or that should be "had" many friends. Roger's now just an old man with short hair who sings with wounded pipes while Pete stumbles while attempting his flying guitar windmill. See me, feel me, touch me, pick me off the floor.  Still a decent show, especially when John Entwistle and Keith Moon make aboriginal appearances. Of course, normal people would call them "apparitional appearances.'' I've seen them many times. I do know Who they are....

I wonder if Red’s got the big, cotton ball that was safety-pinned and then brutally snatched from my long johns’ rear end?  I really didn’t mind, although the draft was a little uncomfortable. It was Red’s attempt at cracking away at the mysterious young guy who sometimes only shaved half his face. That’s another story. I did shower twice a day, though. And I never missed class. Despite it all, I was an honor student, I think, though I may have squandered that all away.

An old woman one night went to her front porch in Ames, Iowa, where I was a scholastic legend, and scolded us for “necking” on her sidewalk. It was kind of reverse from a scene from “It’s A Wonderful Life,” where a fat, old man with a pipe and wearing a wife-beater, told Georgie he should kiss the girl. Youth is wasted on the young, he complained. I was with Red that night. I also spent time with “Blondie.” It was smart to identify them by their hair color so as not to get them confused.  Jocko was with “Mo,” I believe.  Champo and Jocko and Curly Mo.  Blondie and Red? Was Carpy with us? Nardholm?

This is me, recovering from surgery. Sometimes I forget to shave to save energy for the nimble and painful art of healing. I stopped trimming the beard when the surgeries commenced. I have trimmed it again back to its Hemingway-like style. My hair, however, is a mess and basically has not been cut since the day I took my "voluntary buyout" from Nashville's morning newspaper, 18 years ago this August..

I was Facebook Messaging with a friend’s wife in those gridiron stands – Mrs. Titzy – when Red reached out, fondly, from the past by trespassing onto the Message long enough to let me know she forgot to remember to forget. Five decades ago, she had a tidy little house off-campus where Jim/Jocko and I crashed many parties with our strategically dipped hats, apricot scarves and watched ourselves gavotte. Or our long johns. The larger the hole in the rear, the more uncomfortable it was to ride on the back of Jocko’s 175 cc Honda motorcycle (we were an amazing sight as it looked to all concerned that we were just two big guys with wheels coming out of our pink long johns or faded jeans, our cleanest dirty shirts waving in the wind). I wore a football helmet. Jocko had his "legit" head-covering. You know, maybe Red didn’t live there. She just invited us for general amusement and good looks and our well-choreographed singing and dancing. Mostly, she and I would go into the room where the record-player was located and we’d deejay and talk about love and war and my expected expenses-paid vacation in Southeast Asia. Smart girl. So was Blondie. I wouldn't have hung out with dumb girls or guys, except maybe the guy we called "Dog Shit." Actually, Mr. Shit graduated high in his class. A lot of my friends did.

Anyway, those of you who knew I was undergoing a full-body overhaul this winter/spring/summer have been good about not sharing that information. You didn’t know my first scheduled main spine surgery got almost to the operating room when the anesthetist said he’d not put me under. Too sick, remember? He said he didn’t want to kill me, an admirable sentiment not shared by all. But it delayed that final surgery by about two months. And, according to experts, it got a little scary on the redo in the OR when I sprung a two-unit gusher that further fueled my chronic anemia while the surgical nurse fought with what she said was a tough job of getting me stitched up and getting the blood to stop squirting.  I’m still undergoing fierce rehab, but I did grow two inches and can walk with support from a walker, cane, my wife, Suzanne, or my son, Joe, who came down from his home in Minneapolis to help care for me. His bosses allowed him to be remote for six weeks so he could tend to his old dad. “Not all bosses are assholes,” I told him, "although most of mine certainly were.”

I am surprised some on this page, the bulk of whom had no idea I was risking it all, or at least most of it, in an eight-hour surgery, didn’t comment on my absence from posting commentary and photos. I thought we were News "Brothers?" I kinda felt like Old Yeller, in that when they found out the dog's true value, they put a bullet between its eyes. The Invisible Man finds out his true value. So did The Elephant Man. I am a human being, so instead of succumbing to loneliness, I hit my last number and I walked to the road. Hell, I don’t know where that sentence sprung from, other than a dead guy named Tom Petty. I love the dead. He’d have been glad to meet me if my surgery failed:  “You belong among the Wildflowers,” he tells me, time to time. "Or maybe DEAD flowers," I correct him. He always gets the giggles. And some Twinkies.

Anyway, I’ve had Jocko and Rob “Death” Dollar to call. It is part of an All-Star team of disease and bodily malfunction. Jocko is recovering from multiple myeloma. Rob has a bad heart with a half-dozen or perhaps eight pig valves and three from a buffalo.  Like old people do, we talk about when we were young and what’s wrong with us. Oh yeah, then there’s Jim “Flash” Lindgren and his Parkinson’s. Friendship with me is something outrageous, contagious, courageous, because no one gets out alive. Jerry “Chuckles” Manley couldn’t call because he’s forgotten how.  And Scott “Badger’’ Shelton is long dead, although I always welcome him into my dreams about our friendship with Mr. Lone Ranger.  Rob’s always in those dreams, as well. And there's my old college friend, Dr. Tom “Carpy” Carpenter – who first met me (I was a junior) when he was headed with his parents to his assigned room to begin his freshman year. They all had to step aside because I was surfing down the dorm hallway on an ironing board (“Catch a wave and you’re sitting on top of a girl,” I told the virginal veterinary-hopeful with the typical frosh buzzcut. Or something like that. Actually, I just said "Surf's Up." And I don't think his parents were helping with his luggage, but I like the story. Carpy, a loyal and loving lifetime friend, has even checked in from the golf course where he spends his time spending the money he got from a successful vet practice on the SoCal Coast. He even was the vet for John Wayne’s dogs.  True. He is a cancer survivor, clear and strong now as he also spends nights at the blackjack tables at a seedy old-style casino a half-mile from his Las Vegas estate. He doesn’t drink anymore. Most of us don’t. “Can’t have just one,” the potato chip people proclaim.

"Surf's Up, Champo," he said, one afternoon when I caught him a week ago on the Vegas golf course after his 5-iron shot dropped into a water hazard filled with alligators and rotting gangster bodies.

Whiskey and food writer Jim “Culinarity” Myers has done a welfare check and recommended some of his family’s famed Milwaukee remedies to chase away the pain as my body tries to heal. I think he’s healthy, though he’s finally discovered age, like Dexter, is creeping its homicidal scythe his way. He drove home to Wisconsin this summer, but the Nazi border cops at the Illinois border stopped him on his way back with big wheels of cheese and 12 cases of Milwaukee's Best in his trunk. He gave the beer to the cops. The wheels of cheese he had to use as spare tires because the coppers used spike strips to stop him and tore the wheels of his '87 LeBaron. 

Anyway, this little piece of writing began with me stating I don’t belong in these times. And that’s really what I am writing about.

“These Times” when some of my preferred icons disappear from the material world and people offer the common explanation: “Well he (or she) was 82... And then there were all of those drugs.’’

 The latter comment always carries a note or three of jealousy. Or perhaps unearned righteousness. Yes, folks. There were all those drugs. Or did you forget, conveniently, who you were before you “grew up” into a successful, white-starch, career person with a jolly Scots whiskey belly, two kids, khakis, Kiwanis membership, green greed and a boat you seldom use?

Or are you, like me, continuing to fiddle away with the piano keys in the sandbox of your mind and nod, affectionately looking in happy poverty back at your random and sometimes benevolent life?

When discussing fallen heroes, for the self-important and chubby, it’s as if that too-much-dope “he had it coming” dismissal might deaden the pain caused by the worm-bait remainders of the recently breathing, who helped punctuate my own 7.35 (or something like that) decades.

Generally, when folks of the caliber and personal import of Sly Stone and Brian Wilson die, I quickly turn the rich, black soil and worm bait of my own soul and do one-take "Flapjacks" reflections that end up being examinations of my encounters with them and of the holes they leave and the ones their corpses fill. Sometimes the dregs of my soul innocently spill out onto this word stew.  I can’t stop them.

I didn’t write of Sly Stone’s June 9 and Brian Wilson’s June 11 deaths, even though both men, artistic genius and culture wagon-masters, had massive impacts on me simply by passing through my life while laughing, inhaling, stumbling or being passed-over-a-crowd-like-a-beach-ball-in-a-mosh-pit.  I was way too ill and crippled up to write.

Since music owns half-plus of my soul, I am fortunate to even have personal, quite shallow to my skin, stories to share about such magnificent and revolutionary musicians as these recently deceased geniuses who brought smiles to my often deadpan or otherwise altered façade.

Sly – Sylvester Stewart -- made his mark by proving that different skin colors and musical textures, i.e. The Family Stone, could have universal, color-blind appeal. And every time I saw the band perform, I did, indeed, want to hear his organ and say “ride, Sally, ride.” As noted earlier, I was glad to add some bottom, so the dancers just won’t hide. Of course, on winter nights, that bottom was chapped.

I guess my biggest and best memory of Sly is from one of those concerts, 50-plus years ago, in the Armory at Iowa State University.  I believe it was the first time I’d seen him in anything other than celluloid dreams and personal smokescreens.

Sly arrived four hours late (I believe that Iron Butterfly and Moby Grape had to extend their warm-up sets to keep our attention between announcements about how long it will be until The Family Stone’s increasingly tentative arrival. Can you imagine Iron Butterfly doing In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida for 90 minutes?) Great White or Mason Proffit may have been involved like two hangmen hanging from a tree.  That don’t bother me, at all. Concerts used to come in nightlong packages and tickets were $6 or occasionally free with student ID and “activity ticket.” The free ones often included a visit by me to the stage, where I played tambourines or worked on my image as the “Dancing Bear.” I did climb onstage with Joe Cocker once. He didn’t even notice, nor did I. At least one of us was high with a little help from our friends.  Or, in my case, I may have been showing off and looking at the crowd, needing somebody to come in through my bathroom window. Generally, though, I was sad because I was on my own. Though hardly "A Complete Unknown" (there was a movie by that title recently, and I’ve watched it twice to decide it was a waste of time, enjoyable as a Bullwinkle cartoon.  If I want to learn something about Bob Dylan, the self-created churlish guy or the changeling, I’ll watch “Don’t Look Back” or “Rolling Thunder Revue” or “No Direction Home.” Why waste time on a biopic when the real guy is still out there? I learned nothing other than I really liked the guy who played Pete Seeger, who I did speak with once on the phone. He's dead, too.)

Anyway, “Sly’s landed at the airport in Des Moines now,” said one of those calm-voiced Armory PA guys, an example of one of the updates as Jocko and I passed the quart of Old Grandad. Or perhaps it was Everclear.

Since we all had to trudge through minus-15 Ames, Iowa, winter, we knew that the weather outside was frightful and likely would delay Sly even longer on the 30-mile frozen highway. U.S. 69 was often covered by ice and snow of the eastbound prairie winds. Sly did like snow, but not the frozen field kind. Frozen forehead pick-me-up? Yep. Hey, don’t forget old Champo, Mr. Stewart. All we need is a drummer, for people who only need a beat, yeah ….

Sly and The Family Stone hit the stage at midnight with all the fiery energy money can buy or ingest and a genius collection of musical talent. He was the front man, the heart and soul of the best single package of musicians I’ve ever seen share one spotlight. It was a dazzling carnival that lifted hearts, shook butts and sent souls to the rafters of the old armory. 

Dance to the music.

And it was single moments after the show started that me and Jocko were on our feet and shaking the wooden grandstands. Jim was 6-4 and pushing 250, No. 63, an offensive guard on the Iowa State football team. I was 6-2-plus a smidge and 240 or sometimes a stone less, depending on beer money. (As noted, with the neck rebuild in January and the spine in May, docs say four inches taken away from me by age and general body rot have at least half returned to put me at 6-0, almost 200 and made me a very sweet and generous sort and a massive Taylor Swift fan.)

 As for me and Jim/Jocko a half-century ago, most of our adventures ended up with stops at the all-night Taco Tico, perhaps even the one where somehow we both acquired aluminum coat trees.  He’s still got mine in his home in Florida, where he stays fit, fights ailments and entertains his grandchildren. His granddaughter, living a half-mile away from Jim, always expects a fresh apple from the old man. Sometimes we’d eat from chips bags as we cruised the grocery store aisles, looking for something digestible. Pay for what we consumed mostly when we went to the cash register with Jocko beans and Wiedeman or Van Merritt beer (69-cents a six pack.)

Jim and I love each other this half-century later.  We’ve had massive personal setbacks and pain, but it all vanishes like it did the other day when we laughed about my big brother, the now-dead Eric, who bought a ticket for the Sly pit and stood right up against the center-stage, easy to pick out of the crowd as he almost always wore a purple/black knit beret. A girls hat? Sure. You tell the big guy with 278 pounds of muscle and blueberry pie gut that he looks feminine. He loved hats right up until his death 15 months ago.

“You remember your brother catching Sly when he fell off-stage?” said Jocko.  “And after he got him back on the stage, Sly fell again and he was passed all around the arena, like a beach ball.”

All’s square and far out.

It was the best show I ever saw … at least other than a Faces show I caught with Smokin’ Joe Matejka down at the armory in Des Moines one blizzard-marked night (we had to spend the night in the back of a station wagon with some girls who picked us up as we hitchhiked from Ames.)  We did keep warm in that car. But Smokin’ Joe and I were restricted to the back of the wagon and our chauffeurs stayed in the front.

Now, let’s giddy-up, giddy-up 409 to the other recently dead hero. His stage style was as a sometimes smiling statue, nothing like Sly and his gang, but I also saw Brian Wilson in concert – either with The Beach Boys or as the featured performer at the Nashville July 4 fireworks extravaganza and vomit-fest or with symphonies and the like.

I interviewed Brian two times, and found him an affable sort, though I think he was wearing his pajamas. Understated and soft-voiced, he had an invisible smile, like the joke was on him. And yet the words, mostly simple and rhythmic, were elegant and made me want to catch a wave or drive to the hamburger stand, now.

One of the greatest of American artists, Brian – who took many sabbaticals from the group he kept alive with the sacrifice of his tormented and magical soul – was with his brothers, cousin and Al, their pal, outside Iowa State’s Hilton Coliseum in 1971 or so. They were waiting for It’s a Beautiful Day and The Ides of March to end their sets. (“I’m the friendly stranger in the black sedan, won’t you hop inside my car?” sang The Ides in their hit, "Vehicle." I have a very ribald and perverse version of that song, but it’s too tasteless to put here.  The 18-year-old Champo and Jocko would dirty up any popular song as we performed for ourselves, girls like Blondie, Red and Mo, university residence hall officials, whoever was in range whenever the song played in a dorm hallway or party.

You should have heard what we did with The Doors’ “Touch Me” or even “You’re So Vain,” which we paraphrased when we walked into parties like we were walking, hard-nippled onto a yacht.  I’m digressing. By the way, we never really sang about wanting “to hold your hand.” “Truckin’” was too easy. And I still have a decades-tested Joe Cocker impression in my damaged body. 

Brian and Mike Love, Carl, Dennis, Al Jardine were joking around, passing more than gas as they waited for their top-of-the-bill spot in the field outside the Hilton. That’s where they were when we became lifelong compadres. Or something hazily similar or probably not.

I was caught up in the dark result of some sort of mild confusion involving alcohol and a penchant for getting into concerts for free (this wasn’t included in the activity ticket.) Me, Jocko and The Coach and maybe a few of my apostles, maybe even Carpy (though he may have been studying, his one major weakness), skipped the box office and took a side entrance into the arena, down the truck ramp where the gear and performers were loaded in.  Hell, I’ll bet Nardholm was with us, too. I'd guess Dog Shit chickened out.

Perhaps my bright, yellow snow boots failed me or maybe they just made me an easy target, but within moments I exited the arena up and out the same ramp, with a gentle Ames police officer holding onto my handcuffed arms and doing his best to help me smoke my cigarette with his other hand. We joked around, as after all, this was not really a felon he was leading. Just a barely drunken music fan and bargain-hunter.   He told me I should have waited until the show started, because at that point security really doesn’t care. Too busy dancing.

And that’s how I first met Brian Wilson and The Beach Boys. He was with one of the incarnations of his band on this tour as the cop and I approached them on the frozen, muddy field.

They all laughed through their own thick clouds of Iowa’s finest produce and Brian seemed to laugh the hardest. Nah, that probably was Dennis.

“Hi, guys,” I hollered to the Boys, who had to step aside to allow me to pass through their soul-circle and into the squad car.  They cheerily laughed and greeted me and the cop. And the cop took off my handcuffs and let me sit in the non-criminal passenger seat instead of in the back. He put his cop hat on my head and laughed.

 “Catch a wave and you’re sittin’ on top of a girl,” the cop sang the song I’d taught him.

 “I wish they all could be California Girls,” I answered. The friendly copper obviously had become fond of me and my suddenly shocked-sober manners and apologies, and he clearly was enamored with Brian and the Boys. Later in life, my friend, Rob Dollar and I were friends with a friendly copper who enjoyed back-shooting suspected felons. I think it was a county budget-saving measure. Another day………

On the way to the Ames City Hoosegow, the cop and I chain-smoked and replayed and laughed about our Beach Boys encounter. His favorite song was “Surfer Girl.”  He told me not to feel bad I was missing the concert, as I got a much closer look at the headliners than I would have sitting in the arena.

He also offered me all sorts of cigarettes and told me not to worry, enjoy the experience. There was no failure to communicate. Long story, but I did have a quiet night, smoking and laughing with the  cops while we waited for Jim and my other pals to enter the jail after my five-hour sober-hold expired and say “We’re here to pick up a derelict named Tim Ghianni. You got one of those here?”

My belt was returned by the desk corporal, and I left into the cold, Iowa dawn and to the nearby all-night hamburger stand. Ten greaseburgers for a buck. About 50 greaseburgers went out the door with us and into the Ames morning. Soak up the night before prior to breakfast in the dining hall.

I’ve told different and varying versions of the above story at times, but Brian Wilson’s laughter always is present. Sometimes I even have mentioned Dennis Wilson’s buddy Chuck Manson, who turned out to be something of an asshole. Helter-Skelter, my ass, you crazy fuck.

Like I say, I interviewed Brian many years later, and each time I began our conversations by recounting how The Beach Boys’ laughter in the sweet smoke of that frozen Iowa field was among my life’s highlights. He would laugh and kick loose the sand in the sandbox that surrounded his piano. “Champo, I really like the way you think,” he said. “Reminds me of myself. You really should stay in your room, though."

The words above are just rattling out of my head because I hadn’t been able to write anything after Sly and Brian died.

I admired them both greatly and have, as close as I can figure, the collected works, going all the way back to The Beach Boys’ classic “409” on a carefully preserved 45 rpm. 

Giddy up giddy up giddy up 409 (giddy up giddy up 409)
Giddy up 409 (409, 409)
Giddy up 409 (giddy up giddy up 409)
Giddy up 409...
Nothing can catch her
Nothing can touch my 409 (409, 409, 409, 409)
Giddy up 409 (409, 409, 409, 409)
Giddy up 409 (409, 409, 409, 409)

Sly, well, nothing he wrote was better than “It’s a Family Affair” and his stoic, heart-draining delivery.

One child grows up to be

 Somebody that just loves to learn

 And another child grows up to be

 Somebody you’d just love to burn.

Mom loves the both of them

You see, it’s in the blood

 Both kids are good to Mom

Blood’s thicker than the mud.....

 It’s a family affair………….

 I really hadn’t sorted out what to say before I started writing, so I hope the above works as something of a tribute to great men who shared fleeting moments of my life and who continue to populate my soul as well as answer "Where I Been?" these past seven months, even though no one asked.

It's been fun to relive the Sly show as well as my encounter with The Beach Boys in the frozen mud and hemp field and fun with Jim or Jocko, as we survived many adventures together and I would go back in a minute.  I probably wouldn’t even run more quickly down that ramp if I had a do-over, because I enjoyed my five hours in jail, where I bummed smokes from the cops and I did pull-ups on the pipes across the ceiling. I even sang “Imagine" and my version of Chicago’s (still Chicago Transit Authority and not yet easy listening) “Saturday in the Park” – “Saturday cutting farts, sounded like the Fourth of July.”  Jim and I sing that to each other during the Independence Day phone calls.

The hoosegow night was very, very good to me, from the failed bolt into the concert all the way to my post-dawn release and the fact I hugged the officers “goodbye” as they set me free. And, especially,  my red-eyed outlaw behavior allowed me to spend time in a frozen field with all of The Beach Boys, years before they began to splinter and die. By the way, I did go to city court and tell hizzoner I wasn't drunk. "I've had a lot more to drink most nights." He accepted a nolo contendere plea and fined me $25, including court costs.  

And any time I can think of my brother, who was generally a very tame and sacrilegious fellow, participating in an uncommonly colorful manner, I just have to smile.

Wouldn’t it be nice if I was younger?

I thought that a lot in the days I’ve been undergoing surgery, rehab, physical therapy, the things that have occupied my recent weeks and months and the sleepless nights punctuated by the pain of healing and growing a new spine.

“Pee in this jar so we can check your volume.” 

 “You have a bowel movement yet?”

“You can get more oxy at 2 a.m.”   (“C’mon 2 a.m., c’mon,” I’d whisper into the sheets of the torture chamber that they consider a bed in the therapy wing. The lumpy and contorted mattress itself and my ability to spend 24 hours a day in it was reason enough to have me craving the oxy.

Well, actually about 20 hours were spent daily in my cell. I did four hours of painful therapy and, sometimes, around midnight, when I knew there was no way to sleep in the torture contraption, I’d slip out of bed and collapse in the chair in front of the massive TV and watch baseball game reruns all night.

That pretty much was the soundtrack, day and night, as I wrestled with tears and despair for more than two weeks.

The tears came pretty much from a combination of exhaustion – I probably only slept 10 total hours during my incarceration at a hospital O.R., the ICU, the stepdown and then the rehab hospital.

Fiercely uncomfortable in my near-mortal’s pain, the regular visits by the nurses – “You feel like getting up and going Number 2?” I was asked until the 13^th morning when we had a victory parade, my meager turd serving as grand marshal.

“I’m so proud of you,” chirped Tia, the nurse, as she scouted out my meager, brown sample.

“Now that you can hatch a turd, we’ll probably get you out of here soon,” said a kind overnight tech, an Army retiree whose body was covered with U.S. Army images and ranks and likely hearts and tombstones.

 “Having No. 2 is important.”

I should have had that tattooed on my torso as a permanent reminder. I was just glad I could produce it, so they didn’t need to follow through on their enema threats. I hate having warm water shot up my ass, though some may like it. I’m not one to judge.

“Number 2,” I said with a laugh that usually ended with me asking “Number 9?”  from semi-conscious state as I lay in bed all night, waiting for breakfast and watching MLB replays. “Turn me on, dead man.”

The nurse just looked at me and said she didn’t know what was on Channel 9. And she wasn’t one to make light of the dead man reference.

Early on in my hours of darkness, I gave up on changing the channels, settling in for the duration with MLB except for the night I spun twice through “Shawshank Redemption.”

(Oh yeah, I did also stumble on the film “Kelly’s Heroes” and enjoy the memory of the night 55 years ago when we filled the trunk of my Ford Falcon Futura Sports Coupe and its black vinyl top with a half-dozen other fellows so we could get in the drive-in in Boone, Iowa, at a reduced rate.)  In case you wondered, Wikipedia stipulates that Boone is pronounced “Boon.” And every Thursday, they had all-you-can-eat pizza and fried chicken 55 years ago. We'd line our book bags with foil and do an eat-a-slice, steal a drumstick sort of rhythm going.

Back to my rehab a few weeks ago. Held captive in a bed equipped to set off an alarm if I got out, I wanted to get busy living. 

I guess, going back to the beginning, that’s the instinct that led me to voluntarily opting for massive spinal surgery that has resulted in weeks of agony, irregularly punctuated by constipation and diarrhea. I’m all right now, though. I learned my lesson well.

“What’s your 1-10 pain level, 10 being the worst?” I was asked in the months leading up to surgery and even today, as I go in for maintenance work on the steel and concrete construction that is now standing in for my original spinal column and neck.

“The numbers all go to 11,” I would say.

That was then, this is now, when I’ll fess up and admit that the recent months of fear and loathing (not prayer and redemption) have me settling in at a pain level of about 3 most of the time.

“I’m not going to refill the oxy, because it’s really not good for you,” my personal care physician said the other day as he laughed at my descriptions of my hellish, sleepless nights in the rehab center after I’d had my spine pulled out, cleaned with brake fluid, sanded down and Gorilla glued. I actually told him the oxy was just making me sick, so I stopped taking it weeks ago. No Number 2 sends my brain into a fuzzy No. 9. Turn me on dead man.

I guess I just wasn't made for these times.

Wouldn’t it be nice if I was younger?

 Boom laka-laka-laka, Boom laka-laka-laka, Boom laka-laka boom

I laughed as I thought of me and Jim in our pink long johns and my late pal John Lennon's "Revolution 9" returned from a deep space in my brain:  Then there's this Welsh Rarebit wearing some brown underpants.

Mine were pink.

 

Eric was saving the expensive Irish whiskey for special occasions; A year ago it turned out to be his wake: A rapscallion little brother's kiss of love, loss

Eric, who particularly enjoyed brown whiskeys, had a secret stash that he hid from guests.

If he hadn’t died a year ago today, perhaps I’d be enjoying my first sip of this secret stash with him as he sat, surrounded by his three cats – one resting atop his belly – in the kitchen of his house, five miles from my own.

The notorious cat man and gentlest of souls had splurged for this secret, hiding it away on the top shelf of his kitchen booze cabinet, high above the regular stuff.

It was a $150 or maybe even $175 bottle of Jameson 18-year-old, Limited Reserve Irish Whiskey, if I recall correctly.

 He had tasted it, but then put it back on the top shelf, saving for special occasions.

He did not expect that occasion to be his wake, nor for those who drank it to be among the 40 or 50 friends, cousins, in-law families and his own nuclear family, with spouses and offspring.

His widow, Ann – and I was deservedly their best man all those years ago – didn’t have any alcohol.  She couldn’t and can’t now, as she, with courage and fortitude and faith, continues her battle with cancer well into its second year. I love her and find this damned cancer unfair, as she already lost her husband.  This isn’t about her, though, but I believe she’ll eventually triumph. If you pray, this is a good time. If not, send your best thoughts.

The splurge on the Jameson was just that, an extraordinary purchase. Eric -- who I normally referred to as “Brother,” since I only had one … and now have none -- wasn’t cheap. I’m told you can get pretty damned good brown whiskey (his color of choice) for $50 or $60 range. I really don’t know, because I pretty much retired from that game 30 years ago, limiting consumption to special occasions, holidays, deaths, and the like.

Eric’s upper shelf hidden treasure came after he and Ann had returned from both the Irish Republic and Belfast, where his protestant youth minister son-in-law Michael and his Christian social services worker daughter, Maria live.

My big brother enjoys Lake Michigan 

Eric and daughter Maria strike delightful poses for the camera

I did call him while he was in that green land of Bono and St. Patrick. Highlights included his visits to the locations of his favorite movie: The John Wayne-Maureen O’Hara classic “The Quiet Man” – and times spent at Guinness breweries and Irish whiskey distillers. 

There was joy in his voice when I talked to him during that tour. Much of it came from his delight at seeing where the great film, about a former boxer, who escaped from the violence in the blood-soaked rings of America in pursuit of a quiet life in his homeland. If you knew my brother, it only makes sense that this former Illinois All-State offensive tackle and less-successful college football player -- whose body had been torn apart by that sport, causing the need for a dozen replacement parts over the decades – would find camaraderie with the Duke’s Sean Thornton.   

Brother’s blue Italian eyes were smiling all during that three-week tour, and I’m told he more than held his own when it came to blarney while in the pubs or visiting castles and the like. 

That visit came in the summer of 2023. It was his first, and turned out to be only, trip overseas in his 74 years. 

He did tell me once on the phone that he was almost ready to get home and see those young fellas who thoroughly overtook the heart of the 5-10, 350-pound nicer of the two decrepit Ghianni boys.

But being with Maria and Michael in their warm embrace kept homesickness at bay. 

You see, he also loved his time at home in Nashville, within driving range of his other daughter, Ana, and Josh and their two boys, Sabatino and Emilio (aka Tony and Leo).

 Sometime, after returning to the States and immediately playing with his grandsons in Rutherford County, he splurged on that whiskey.

“I’m going to save that for really special occasions,” or some such he told me, laughing, almost apologetically, for this dynamic expense.

“You can taste it if you come by,” he told me during one of our frequent phone calls. I still have the last voicemail he left me on my phone. The gist of it is that he said he was going to call me back in a later time that never arrived. 

Michael, Maria, Ann, Eric, Ana and Josh with their sons Sabatino and Emilio

He did admit to me, many months post-Ireland over cheeseburgers and beer (him) and dark iced tea (me) at our regular Brown’s Diner lunch, that he began to feel a bit out-of-sorts even before he went to Ireland. In the hospital, he told me he ignored it, figuring he’d get better. “I can’t do this anymore,” he said.

As for the whiskey invitation, he knew I no longer drank much alcohol. In my younger years, when I was a newspaperman, a rapscallion running like I was running out of time, I drank, sometimes to excess.

I told him I’d be glad to taste it though.

Well, when he talked about that special occasion, he wasn’t talking about the wake that came three or four days after he died a year ago.

He didn’t know that 40 or 50 people would be in his paradise, a rock and plant and waterfall-fountain retreat he’d built with his very big and rough hands on a reasonably hot Nashville day.

Pulled pork and fixings -- or maybe it was Mexican food, with beans, rice and guac? (Doesn't matter now) -- filled the counter in the outdoor kitchen he’d constructed next to that oasis, presided over by The Buddha. Eric was no Buddhist, but that statue did kind of favor him on a good and healthy day when he would have been sitting in black T-shirt and sweatpants in this green-grass paradise of stones, water and landscaping.

Water and sodas and beer filled coolers in that outdoor kitchen. The brown whiskeys – mourners brought some and Maria put it all (save for the special bottle, I believe) on the counter below the whiskey shelf.

I mostly sat there, in the shade of outdoor kitchen, trying to converse pleasantly, but mostly a mourning quiet man, realizing Brother was gone for good.

Sometime as that long, sad spring day turned into a night of laughter and tears, the special bottle was discovered and put on the whiskey counter. At least that’s the way I figure it.

For the most part, the bottle was as drained as were those of us who had spent a morning at a funeral home and many, many hours laughing through melancholy, which is what you are supposed to do at an Irish wake for an Italian-American who saw himself in John Wayne’s gentle giant who won Maureen O’Hara’s heart.

I went upstairs to visit with my son Joe and Maria and Michael, when I saw the special bottle had been ransacked.

Eric, who was somewhere in the clouds or chirping with the crickets, depending on what you believe, wouldn’t have minded, though.

The bottle was for a special occasion. He wasn’t there, but his loved ones were, plastic tumblers and shot glasses from his special collection filled, remembering him and reflecting on his impact on them.

Unfortunately, I never got to taste from the special bottle, but that’s OK. I wasn’t planning on coming out of my reckless retirement on that day. I had too much to think about.

I sure as hell miss my brother. I’m still waiting for him to drive his tan pickup truck over here to pick me up for lunch at Brown’s Diner. Maybe I’ll have a beer with my cheeseburger this time. I think it’s my turn to buy.

 #####

I was the eulogist at the funeral at Woodlawn, where the kindly undertakers allowed family a few minutes to see Eric’s earthly remains before planned cremation.

 

If you are interested, you might like to read that eulogy. Eric would have laughed his ass off and made fun of me:   

 

The long, black cloud settling in on the ICU room a few days ago, I knew my brother was listening to what people were saying, so I leaned close to his left ear.

“I love you, Eric. More than you may know. I’m going to miss you.  But I still wish you hadn’t pushed me down when I was taking my first steps.”

Eric stirred a little. I think others in the family were worried that he was moving too much, for a man on the brink, to be healthy.

So, I was asked not to say any more right then, so he’d calm down.  There still was hope, of course, but it was dimming.

But that motion by my big brother as he lay there?  I swear he was laughing. About me reminding him of his jealous cruelty to his baby brother more than 70 years ago.

He always laughed when I recounted that incident that our Dad captured on his Super 8mm movie camera back in 1953. 

I’ve seen it countless times. I was taking my first steps on the sidewalk in front of our house at 1812 Beverly Road in Sylvan Lake, Michigan.

I don’t know how old I was. Less than 2.  Just as I begin those steps for posterity, a to-then-unparalleled achievement by me, Eric comes from behind and pushes me down. Then he walks to the camera, smiling.

That kind of defined our relationship until we got into our teens, really. Eric simply didn’t take kindly for a long time to the fact Mom and Dad brought this beautiful specimen home from St. Joseph Hospital in Pontiac, Michigan.

He never apologized, by the way.  But I more than forgave him.  He looked up to me for my accomplishments. I looked up to him, not just for his accomplishments but for how nice he was.

Yes, this guy who pushed his fragile and sweet baby brother down on the sidewalk went on to become my best friend, other than my wife.

If I was shook up for any reason, personally or professionally or financially or simply because I’m a guy who gets all shook up, I’d call him or see him.  He had simple, practical, to-the-point advice.

I’d like to think that I was something of a lifelong security blanket to him, after he stopped pushing me to the concrete, rubbing my face into a rug or slugging me in my left arm. Always the left. 

When my arm aches, I’ll generally blame it on a lingering after-effect of a COVID or flu shot. Perhaps. More likely deep bruises left by my brother, right up into our mid-teens when we squared off, in one of those kicking, punching, spitting, hair-pulling fights on our parents’ front lawn in the Chicago area. Neighbor kids came to watch. They probably were too young to bet, but if they did, I’m sure they’d have picked Eric to leave me dazed and confused.

I figured I was going down myself, but I’d started the fight because I finally had enough. I did beat him that day.  And when he stood back up, he smiled.  He was proud of me. We never had a fistfight again. In fact, we became each other’s biggest advocate.

I always was so proud that Eric was my brother, even during the early, bully years. He was smart. He was athletic. He was a great football player to my mediocrity. My Dad liked him a lot better than he liked me…..

That’s true, of course.  That was one thing Eric and I agreed on.  We also agreed on a lot of things about Dad and his peculiarities.  We loved him like we had loved our mother, who had her own quirks.

I’m not going to go any further on this subject, but last Saturday, when my wife and I were in Eric’s hospital room, his daughter, Ana, called. He spoke with her and his two grandsons on Face Time. He had no favorites between these beautiful, beautiful, beautiful darling boys. But he asked Ana to call back in an hour or so.

“Tim is here with Suzanne,” he told her. “We want to make fun of Dad for a while.”

It was one of our favorite topics when we’d go out to an occasional lunch at Brown’s Diner or maybe when he called me from his backyard garden and just wanted to talk and laugh and to offer up a toast to Dad’s memory.

I need to add that Eric liked to get me in trouble. Eventually I figured out how to reverse the score. I remember one time his bullying backfired mightily, embarrassing Mom and Dad.  I don’t think a switch came out, but there was anger in the air after Eric locked us both in Davy Crockett’s boyhood cabin on the Nolichucky.

I was maybe 3, Eric 5, when our parents decided to take us on a road trip – we took one every summer – to the South.  We saw D.C. We saw the changing of the guard at Arlington. We saw Gettysburg.

But it was at Davy Crockett’s cabin that Eric came up with the wise idea that he was going to scare his little brother by locking me in the cabin with the big, wooden sliding lock. Problem was he hadn’t thought it through well. Sure, I was scared by being locked in. Just me and my brother. I couldn’t open the door.

But you see, Eric couldn’t lift that wooden bar either. We both were locked in. Outside, we could hear Mom and Dad yelling for us, as if we were lost.  It fell on Eric – who was taller than me – to holler through the open window.

The park ranger crawled through that window and unlocked the door, angrily escorting us out and I’m sure telling Mom and Dad to keep the little beasts under control.

Oh, we also got in trouble together, I should note.  One time, in Chicago, Eric and a friend of ours and I were out blowing off illegal firecrackers on the Fourth.  The biggest booms came when we tossed a batch of Lady Fingers near a school. The firecrackers echoed. Apparently, phones were dialed. 

Suddenly, there were sirens coming our way. We ran through the backyards, trying to find sanctuary from the police.  Just as they turned onto our street, we came upon my mother, who had our dog, Misty, out on a leash. When she had heard the sirens, she figured they were for us, so she was out in the dark giving us an alibi.  “Just pet Misty and be quiet,” she instructed us. “And we’ll walk home.”

The cops saw this Norman Rockwell scene of a mother walking three young boys and a dog on the Fourth of July and they figured we were not the suspects in the harmless, but noisy explosions.

I talked with my best college friend the other day, telling him Eric had died. Eric seldom joined us in our all-night weekend adventures on the streets of Ames, Iowa.  But my friend, like Eric, was a football player at Iowa State University.

“He was a real good fellow,” said my friend, Jim Mraz. Then we laughed about the day we left our dorm to go across campus to see Eric compete in a campuswide pie-eating contest. They were blueberry pies. Eric won.  Jim and I laughed at the memory of the big guy with blueberries filling his beard and hair as a price of winning. 

So many stories. The New Year’s Eve we went to downtown Chicago to see the film The Great White Hope, only to find out that the rest of the theater – except us – were fully uniformed Black Panthers.  We stayed, but when one of the Panthers got up to go get some popcorn, he stomped his boot, accidentally, on my foot.

“Oh, man, I’m so sorry,” I told the guy. Eric was just watching, holding in a laugh that out of fear I had apologized to the guy who should have been apologizing to me.

Younger days shouldn’t be forgotten. There was the Camp Spikehorn gang, me, Eric, and our cousins Marc and Jeff. We were all in single digits age-wise, and Marc and Jeff, who spent chunks of their summers with us, went to Camp Spikehorn day camp a couple of summers when we lived in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Marc’s gone now. And Eric has joined him. But Jeff’s still around. And he may or may not remember that the biggest thing we got out of the camp was the song “Up in the air, the junior birdman, up in the air upside down, up in the air, the junior birdman, with your noses to the ground.”  There are hand motions and hand-goggles to go with it. I’m not sure if Jeff remembers it or not.  The only reason I do is that Eric would break into that song, from a dead silence, all of his days.

And when you hear the grand announcement
That your wings are made of tin,
You will know the junior bird men
Have turned their box tops in.

For it takes five box tops,
Four bottle bottoms,
Three wrappers,
Two labels,
And one thin dime.

I can’t help but smile when thinking how that song would have sounded coming from the mouth of a 90-year-old Eric.

I’ll not find out, of course.

And I’m a little angry.

Eric, what a fine mess you’ve gotten me into this time.

For all of our early bickering, that nasty downward shove to this toddler, all the “I’ll tell Mom” threats, mostly unrealized, as we knew we’d both get in trouble, I loved you more than just about anything.

For my 72½ years, you were there. My big brother. The football hero who Dad loved best. The guy who collected abandoned cats like they were baseball cards. The kindest and nicest guy I ever knew.

Eric: I fully anticipated that this would be you up here talking about your crazy brother. I was sure you would outlive me. I told you so. It didn’t work out that way, so I’m going to pledge to stick around as long as I can, at least long-enough to teach your grandsons, the lights of your life, Emilio and Sabatino, the Junior Birdman song.

Sixty or 70 years ago, there was this nice family, basic middle-class Midwesterners. Mom and Dad at the ends of the table, Eric and me on either side.   We had the basic Beaver Cleaver All-American conversations while we choked down brussels sprouts and liver, if that was the meal of the day.  Most days, of course, the food was delicious.

And they were beautiful dinners. An All-American Family. Four people loving each other more than anyone else in the world.

That’s in my memories, and that’s good. In reality, there’s only one still sitting at that table.