My mother and I had always been close. When I was a 16 we experienced multiple losses in our family. She and I were all each other had for much of our lives. That’s why when she became severely ill, there was no question that I would drop everything to take care of her, despite the consequences. My mother is an inspiration to me. Throughout her life she faced many difficulties, and did it with grace. Superman, James Bond, no one had anything on her. She was my hero! os2 MOM’S FIRST WEDDING ALA GOODFELLAS She lived a wild life in her youth – her work as a hat-check girl at a bar in the Bronx in the ‘50s introduced her to mobsters and motorcycles. It was as if her life came straight out of the film Goodfellas. She married her high school sweetheart and had her first child, Louis. She and her first husband soon got a divorce. Ten years later she met and married my father, who had fought in Vietnam and was a police officer for over 20 years. After I was born we all moved to Florida to be close to her mother. Two years later, when she was 38, my mom’s health problems began when she was diagnosed with cervical cancer and had to have her ovaries removed. Then, after many years of constant fighting and regular separations, my dad finally moved out for good. Less than a month later, my grandmother died after suffering a massive stroke, and five months after that my brother died from a drug overdose. Things seemed to fall apart, but that year of tragedy cemented the bond we had. os3 WHOLE FAMILY TOGETHER, 6 MONTHS LATER, ONLY ME AND MOM Not even a year later, I kept nagging my mom to get a mammogram. She would say to me, “How do you even know what that word means?” I don’t know where I heard it but I was so nervous that I could lose her, too, that I just kept telling her to go get one. She didn’t want to because of all the grief we were going through but to calm me down she went. And they found a lump. She had breast cancer and had got a mastectomy. She would tell everyone how I saved her life. Really, she did all the work; I just helped her along the way. Little did we know that these years were a precursor to what would happen decades later. Life wasn’t all gloom and doom. In 1991, I joined a band named Collapsing Lungs. As our popularity increased we opened shows for many touring national bands. Eventually, we signed a record deal with Atlantic Records, put out a CD, made a video and went on tour. Guess who was one of the main actors in the video for our song, Crackerjack? Yep, it was MY MOM!
Posted on: Mon, 13 Oct 2014 03:03:07 +0000
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