I contemplated writing today but wasn’t sure I would. I let the day take me where it would but suddenly find myself writing anyway. I contemplated going to the cemetery to visit my father today and as much as I wanted to be there, I also had no desire to get stuck in traffic for 45 minutes on the way back as my timing was a bit off for this trip today. And honestly, I am fighting real, real hard to stay positive in an ever changing and unpredictable world and I knew that if I went to the cemetery I would fall to pieces.
You see yesterday was Father’s Day- my first with no father to celebrate with. Truth be told, I handled it better than I and others thought I would. We tried to get a group together to go out to Orient Beach State Park for a BBQ as had become tradition over the years, but no one seemed interested. In the past my brother and my ex would take him fishing. In more recent years my uncle would join them for the fishing festivities while my mother and I staked a picnic table and a BBQ pit awaiting their catch to be grilled up with the rest of the food we brought along. On Easter my mother and I sat home. At first the idea seemed good as it was a most beautiful day, but having only felt sorry for ourselves afterwards, I decided we needed to get out and enjoy the day away from the house and not have a repeat performance. A change of scenery to take our minds off of things was in order.
For the most part, the day was very pleasant and I handled it quite well. As we were leaving, my mother went into the car for her beach chair and stumbled across my father’s beach hat. They had these matching straw hats and male or female worn- they were hideous. Nonetheless, they both wore them sitting in the yard or at the beach to block the sun and prevent my father’s bald head from burning. Yesterday, my mother came in from the trunk of her car with tears in her eyes letting me know that she had run across his hat. She wondered if we should take it with us and float it out to sea at Orient since he loved fishing and the ocean so much. We ended up leaving the hat in the trunk but I do have to admit that the sentiment got to me a bit.
I tried with all my might to make this a pleasurable day and I guess deep down inside I tried to not think about what the day represented to so many. It ended up being only three of us on the trip- my mother, my boyfriend and I. (In case you are wondering, the boyfriend and I are good. No idea what got into him that weekend in Rhode Island, but he is a good egg and is aware of his actions and I don’t think he will be making those same impatient mistakes again. I may talk more about him or I may not depending on where my writing takes me today but let me finish up my original thoughts first.)
So anyway….. my boyfriend drove my mother and I out to Orient. He lived in Pennsylvania for most of his life, only having moved to Long Island 3 or 4 years ago for a job opportunity. He had never been to this beach and while the beach itself is not the best for bathing, it is beautiful and has an excellent picnic and BBQ area. There is even a man that rents kayaks to take out in the Bay. So when I invited him to join us if he wished, he was ready and willing to go. As we drove there, he made a comment that he had been there last year with an ex-girlfriend for some festival but beyond that, he was not too familiar with the East End of Long Island. I on the other hand was very familiar. I practically grew up there and thought nothing about the hour plus car ride required to get to the end of the Island. Orient one week, Montauk the other. Some days by car just to walk around and see the sites I have seen time and time again, and other time with my father’s boat in tow or to meet a fishing charter during the years he had no boat.
Up until this point, I was doing fairly well. We were laughing and having conversations about this and that in the car but when the comment came up about my boyfriend not knowing this part of the Island that well, I began to look out the window as we drove by and it started to hit me some. Every building, road, restaurant, marina or side street had a story or a memory attached to it. My father loved the East End. He loved the water and he loved to fish. Every time he had a story to photograph for the paper he worked at, he would volunteer to do it on his own free time just so he had an excuse to go out there. (Of course he expensed some of it, but he loved the drive, the scenery, the lifestyle and the calm at that end of the Island) Catapano Farms where he had taken a photo of a woman that made soap and fudge from the goats she raised. Sang Lee’s Farm where he took a ride on a tractor to photograph the crops while the rest of us tasted yummy complimentary stir fry. My ex even ate an ornamental pepper despite the warning not to eat it and shortly afterwards he found himself staring at this tongue in the rearview mirror of the car to see if it had melted out of his mouth.
Down the next street were boat ramps, fishing sites and marinas my father dragged us to time and time again to inquire for his boat launching. Down another street was a restaurant he took us to that his friend at Newsday had opened up with her husband. The food was real good actually and they made fresh homemade mozzarella. They brought it to the table and it was still warm and I thought to myself, “How on Earth could warm cheese be served let alone taste good.” Well I stood corrected because to this day, it was the best fresh mozzarella I had ever eaten. Now truth be told, just about everything on the East End had something to do with fishing, visiting a marina or my father’s boat. After a while we caught on and stopped wanting to take a “ride out East on a beautiful day.” Even my father’s friends restaurant had a hidden agenda. He made it seem as if he was supporting her new business, but truth be told, the restaurant was part of a marina and he was scoping out places to keep his boat and people willing to give him a discount for the season.
So as we drove past each road, farm stand or marina- they all had a story or a memory attached to them. Some people never visit the East End of Long Island or do so very rarely but I suppose that was one thing I had taken for granted until this moment. Yesterday, the drive out East represented not just a nice day, but a lifetime of memories with my father and a series of traditions that had all come to an end during a cold evening in January when he passed. The funny thing is that my father was convinced he had done nothing meaningful in his life and that as soon as he was gone from this Earth that he would so quickly be forgotten. As became evident the other day, he could not have been more wrong. So as the boyfriend drove, I shed a tear, or two or three (hundred) as my mother handed me Kleenex.
Around the time we go to the park I managed to pull myself together some. My boyfriend is pretty active and last week he brought me to visit his family in PA where they camped. He found out my mom had a bike and he was super excited. My induction to meeting his family was a 7 mile bike ride (uphill). Anyway, as Orient Beach State Park has a nice bike trail, we dragged the bikes with us yesterday. While my mother sat on the beach reading her book, we took a ride along the path and then out by the Ferry and into some wooded hiking trail area. Towards the end, it led out by the ocean and then down this path that took us out by the Cable Crossing across from Plum Gut.
We ran into a couple of people fly fishing from the rocks and we stopped to walk around and explore. My boyfriend found himself asking how the fishing was going and why this was a good spot. He got an explanation from someone that seemed to love fishing as much as my father did. This gentleman talked about the tide, the current, the moon and why that was a good spot to fish. And while my boyfriend got educated on a sport he is not that interested in, I recalled the many times my father took us out there on his boat and anchored up. The water was so rough because of the current and the shifting tides and with the anchor holding us in one spot, the boat rocked violently from side to side. I recall many a times how I was forced to lie down on the deck in the blazing heat and try and sleep of the sea sickness my father repeatedly tried to inflict upon me in that very spot. I also recalled my father’s explanation of why this was a good spot to catch the fish and I begged him to please release the anchor and move the boat to calmer waters. Then I recalled a time there at Plum Gut when there happened to be a fishing pole in my way. I was sick and just wanted to sit down and the men had taken over every inch of the boat with blood, guts, fish bate and poles. Trying to make my way to a corner of the front of the boat, I threw a pole to the side which had a rubber bottom. It bounced off the floor and into the ocean it went. I got yelled at that day and I also got the nick name of “pole murderer” which came about every time we hit that spot for some more sea sickness….oh, did I say that- I meant for more fishing.
All these stories of my father, fishing and his boat……… His two passions in life- photography and fishing. Now as I sit in the backyard writing this, I look over and see his boat shrink wrapped in the yard. It has been there for the past 3 or 4 years covered in plastic. My father was so ill he could not even take his boat out. One year he even uncovered it and would sit in the fighting chair in the yard on beautiful summers day secretly wishing he was on the water with a pole in his hand. For years he contemplated selling it, but the very thought brought tears to his eyes as it seemed to be the thing he loved the most in life. He was so upset that he was too ill to use his boat so he would put ads in the paper or on Craigslist to sell it, but as soon as he got a hit, he would rush to take the ad down as he had changed his mind. He knew that if he got rid of his boat, he would never again have another. Last year, he gave that boat to my brother as an early wedding present hoping my brother would get it up an running so he could get out on the ocean on last time. Every time my father was not doing well, my brother would yell at him to hang in there or do what the doctors told him because he needed a first mate on the boat this summer. Upon my father’s death bed, he looked over at my brother and said, “I’m sorry Ant, but I don’t think I will be around to be your first mate on the boat this summer.”
The boat now sits in the yard. My brother contemplated getting it ready but a combination of him planning his wedding and knowing it is going to be a painful task, it just sits there. As I look over at it, a lifetimes of memories lie under that cover and the unwrapping of it will represent a significant person missing from the captains chair. Certainly nothing in life stays the same, but that boat represented so much to all of us and now the days of joking around and catching fish with my father are also gone forever. So as you can see, a trip out East and a jog down memory lane were bitter sweet on Father’s Day.
All this being said, I guess yesterday was a good day. I had some moments but also some fond memories. I thought about going to the cemetery this weekend, but it only would have upset me so. I no longer have a father but it is not like he never existed. They don’t write a manual for this. Am I supposed to ignore the day, honor his memory in some way or go and talk to a wall and hope that secretly he hears me and that is makes a difference?
You see my father was not the best communicator, nor was he emotional or supportive as a father. He never really told me outright that he loved me or was proud of me. I guess the closest he ever came was a conversation I overheard him having with my aunt when I was in the other room. My father was sick at the time and as you know, last year was a year of new beginnings, endings, unraveling of my life and then trying to figure out how to put it all together again. Divorce, loss of my job, having to move and then ultimately helping to care for my father and get his affairs in order as I saw his passing coming (just not so quickly).
For whatever reason, my father never really opened up to any of his kids and not even to my mother at times, but he would always spill his guts to his sister. One day I heard him talking to my aunt and he said, “You know who I feel the worst about….Net. She has been through so much and now she has to be taking care of me. It is just not fair to her.” As I got his disability papers in order for work and then applied for his social security disability, took him to doctors, drove him to hospitals, made his appointments and got his meds in order, he did say to me once or twice- “Thank you for all your help. I don’t know what I would do without you.” I guess this was the closest he would ever come to being proud of me but that did not come until the very end when he saw his time drawing near and he began making amends for years of not telling the people in his life what they meant to him.
You see yesterday was Father’s Day- my first with no father to celebrate with. Truth be told, I handled it better than I and others thought I would. We tried to get a group together to go out to Orient Beach State Park for a BBQ as had become tradition over the years, but no one seemed interested. In the past my brother and my ex would take him fishing. In more recent years my uncle would join them for the fishing festivities while my mother and I staked a picnic table and a BBQ pit awaiting their catch to be grilled up with the rest of the food we brought along. On Easter my mother and I sat home. At first the idea seemed good as it was a most beautiful day, but having only felt sorry for ourselves afterwards, I decided we needed to get out and enjoy the day away from the house and not have a repeat performance. A change of scenery to take our minds off of things was in order.
For the most part, the day was very pleasant and I handled it quite well. As we were leaving, my mother went into the car for her beach chair and stumbled across my father’s beach hat. They had these matching straw hats and male or female worn- they were hideous. Nonetheless, they both wore them sitting in the yard or at the beach to block the sun and prevent my father’s bald head from burning. Yesterday, my mother came in from the trunk of her car with tears in her eyes letting me know that she had run across his hat. She wondered if we should take it with us and float it out to sea at Orient since he loved fishing and the ocean so much. We ended up leaving the hat in the trunk but I do have to admit that the sentiment got to me a bit.
I tried with all my might to make this a pleasurable day and I guess deep down inside I tried to not think about what the day represented to so many. It ended up being only three of us on the trip- my mother, my boyfriend and I. (In case you are wondering, the boyfriend and I are good. No idea what got into him that weekend in Rhode Island, but he is a good egg and is aware of his actions and I don’t think he will be making those same impatient mistakes again. I may talk more about him or I may not depending on where my writing takes me today but let me finish up my original thoughts first.)
So anyway….. my boyfriend drove my mother and I out to Orient. He lived in Pennsylvania for most of his life, only having moved to Long Island 3 or 4 years ago for a job opportunity. He had never been to this beach and while the beach itself is not the best for bathing, it is beautiful and has an excellent picnic and BBQ area. There is even a man that rents kayaks to take out in the Bay. So when I invited him to join us if he wished, he was ready and willing to go. As we drove there, he made a comment that he had been there last year with an ex-girlfriend for some festival but beyond that, he was not too familiar with the East End of Long Island. I on the other hand was very familiar. I practically grew up there and thought nothing about the hour plus car ride required to get to the end of the Island. Orient one week, Montauk the other. Some days by car just to walk around and see the sites I have seen time and time again, and other time with my father’s boat in tow or to meet a fishing charter during the years he had no boat.
Up until this point, I was doing fairly well. We were laughing and having conversations about this and that in the car but when the comment came up about my boyfriend not knowing this part of the Island that well, I began to look out the window as we drove by and it started to hit me some. Every building, road, restaurant, marina or side street had a story or a memory attached to it. My father loved the East End. He loved the water and he loved to fish. Every time he had a story to photograph for the paper he worked at, he would volunteer to do it on his own free time just so he had an excuse to go out there. (Of course he expensed some of it, but he loved the drive, the scenery, the lifestyle and the calm at that end of the Island) Catapano Farms where he had taken a photo of a woman that made soap and fudge from the goats she raised. Sang Lee’s Farm where he took a ride on a tractor to photograph the crops while the rest of us tasted yummy complimentary stir fry. My ex even ate an ornamental pepper despite the warning not to eat it and shortly afterwards he found himself staring at this tongue in the rearview mirror of the car to see if it had melted out of his mouth.
Down the next street were boat ramps, fishing sites and marinas my father dragged us to time and time again to inquire for his boat launching. Down another street was a restaurant he took us to that his friend at Newsday had opened up with her husband. The food was real good actually and they made fresh homemade mozzarella. They brought it to the table and it was still warm and I thought to myself, “How on Earth could warm cheese be served let alone taste good.” Well I stood corrected because to this day, it was the best fresh mozzarella I had ever eaten. Now truth be told, just about everything on the East End had something to do with fishing, visiting a marina or my father’s boat. After a while we caught on and stopped wanting to take a “ride out East on a beautiful day.” Even my father’s friends restaurant had a hidden agenda. He made it seem as if he was supporting her new business, but truth be told, the restaurant was part of a marina and he was scoping out places to keep his boat and people willing to give him a discount for the season.
So as we drove past each road, farm stand or marina- they all had a story or a memory attached to them. Some people never visit the East End of Long Island or do so very rarely but I suppose that was one thing I had taken for granted until this moment. Yesterday, the drive out East represented not just a nice day, but a lifetime of memories with my father and a series of traditions that had all come to an end during a cold evening in January when he passed. The funny thing is that my father was convinced he had done nothing meaningful in his life and that as soon as he was gone from this Earth that he would so quickly be forgotten. As became evident the other day, he could not have been more wrong. So as the boyfriend drove, I shed a tear, or two or three (hundred) as my mother handed me Kleenex.
Around the time we go to the park I managed to pull myself together some. My boyfriend is pretty active and last week he brought me to visit his family in PA where they camped. He found out my mom had a bike and he was super excited. My induction to meeting his family was a 7 mile bike ride (uphill). Anyway, as Orient Beach State Park has a nice bike trail, we dragged the bikes with us yesterday. While my mother sat on the beach reading her book, we took a ride along the path and then out by the Ferry and into some wooded hiking trail area. Towards the end, it led out by the ocean and then down this path that took us out by the Cable Crossing across from Plum Gut.
We ran into a couple of people fly fishing from the rocks and we stopped to walk around and explore. My boyfriend found himself asking how the fishing was going and why this was a good spot. He got an explanation from someone that seemed to love fishing as much as my father did. This gentleman talked about the tide, the current, the moon and why that was a good spot to fish. And while my boyfriend got educated on a sport he is not that interested in, I recalled the many times my father took us out there on his boat and anchored up. The water was so rough because of the current and the shifting tides and with the anchor holding us in one spot, the boat rocked violently from side to side. I recall many a times how I was forced to lie down on the deck in the blazing heat and try and sleep of the sea sickness my father repeatedly tried to inflict upon me in that very spot. I also recalled my father’s explanation of why this was a good spot to catch the fish and I begged him to please release the anchor and move the boat to calmer waters. Then I recalled a time there at Plum Gut when there happened to be a fishing pole in my way. I was sick and just wanted to sit down and the men had taken over every inch of the boat with blood, guts, fish bate and poles. Trying to make my way to a corner of the front of the boat, I threw a pole to the side which had a rubber bottom. It bounced off the floor and into the ocean it went. I got yelled at that day and I also got the nick name of “pole murderer” which came about every time we hit that spot for some more sea sickness….oh, did I say that- I meant for more fishing.
All these stories of my father, fishing and his boat……… His two passions in life- photography and fishing. Now as I sit in the backyard writing this, I look over and see his boat shrink wrapped in the yard. It has been there for the past 3 or 4 years covered in plastic. My father was so ill he could not even take his boat out. One year he even uncovered it and would sit in the fighting chair in the yard on beautiful summers day secretly wishing he was on the water with a pole in his hand. For years he contemplated selling it, but the very thought brought tears to his eyes as it seemed to be the thing he loved the most in life. He was so upset that he was too ill to use his boat so he would put ads in the paper or on Craigslist to sell it, but as soon as he got a hit, he would rush to take the ad down as he had changed his mind. He knew that if he got rid of his boat, he would never again have another. Last year, he gave that boat to my brother as an early wedding present hoping my brother would get it up an running so he could get out on the ocean on last time. Every time my father was not doing well, my brother would yell at him to hang in there or do what the doctors told him because he needed a first mate on the boat this summer. Upon my father’s death bed, he looked over at my brother and said, “I’m sorry Ant, but I don’t think I will be around to be your first mate on the boat this summer.”
The boat now sits in the yard. My brother contemplated getting it ready but a combination of him planning his wedding and knowing it is going to be a painful task, it just sits there. As I look over at it, a lifetimes of memories lie under that cover and the unwrapping of it will represent a significant person missing from the captains chair. Certainly nothing in life stays the same, but that boat represented so much to all of us and now the days of joking around and catching fish with my father are also gone forever. So as you can see, a trip out East and a jog down memory lane were bitter sweet on Father’s Day.
All this being said, I guess yesterday was a good day. I had some moments but also some fond memories. I thought about going to the cemetery this weekend, but it only would have upset me so. I no longer have a father but it is not like he never existed. They don’t write a manual for this. Am I supposed to ignore the day, honor his memory in some way or go and talk to a wall and hope that secretly he hears me and that is makes a difference?
You see my father was not the best communicator, nor was he emotional or supportive as a father. He never really told me outright that he loved me or was proud of me. I guess the closest he ever came was a conversation I overheard him having with my aunt when I was in the other room. My father was sick at the time and as you know, last year was a year of new beginnings, endings, unraveling of my life and then trying to figure out how to put it all together again. Divorce, loss of my job, having to move and then ultimately helping to care for my father and get his affairs in order as I saw his passing coming (just not so quickly).
For whatever reason, my father never really opened up to any of his kids and not even to my mother at times, but he would always spill his guts to his sister. One day I heard him talking to my aunt and he said, “You know who I feel the worst about….Net. She has been through so much and now she has to be taking care of me. It is just not fair to her.” As I got his disability papers in order for work and then applied for his social security disability, took him to doctors, drove him to hospitals, made his appointments and got his meds in order, he did say to me once or twice- “Thank you for all your help. I don’t know what I would do without you.” I guess this was the closest he would ever come to being proud of me but that did not come until the very end when he saw his time drawing near and he began making amends for years of not telling the people in his life what they meant to him.
Anyway, this morning I woke up and was sick to my stomach. I was just anxious about the state of affairs in my life, not knowing where I am headed, the whole job thing all over again. Thinking back to a time I went through this last year and wondering if I was strong enough to go through it all over again. And lately, I have been thinking about my father a whole lot. I dragged myself out of bed and went for my usual summer walk to get my exercise in, plan my day and clear my head. Towards the end of my walk, I began thinking of my father and how I did not even go visit him for Father’s Day. Knowing my father, he would be disappointed with me and probably the rest of the family as well thinking he had been forgotten. So I contemplated going today but ultimately I never worked up the nerve to go and I must say that I am feeling guilty for not doing more, but really- in this situation, what more could I really be doing to pay tribute to an man that is not here.
As a result of what is going or should I say not going in my life, I imagined myself sitting on the bench in front of his wall crying my eyes out and wondering why. I pictured myself asking if he could return the favor and take care of me this time around because I seemed to be at a loss for answers and direction in my life. I know that things happen for a reason in life- good or bad and that we may never understand or like the reason, but could he please just help point me in the right direction because I don’t know what I am doing wrong lately. It pains me that I find myself in this situation yet I know I must be strong, stay positive and continue to fight for there have to be better days ahead. My rainbow is out there and I have seen glimpses of it here and there. Certain people in my life represent certain bands of color, but ultimately, I know that one day I will see the rainbow in its entirety and what a magnificent rainbow it will be.
I could go on and on writing about this and that as I have so many thought going through my head right now, but I think I will stop here for today. I will leave this blog entry about my father, the late, Tony Jerome who while he is gone from my life physically, he will never be forgotten.
I love you Daddy. Please help me to find my way and know that no matter what, you are in my heart and in my thoughts for an eternity!
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