Hello everyone!
It's been quite a while, hasn't it? My sincerest apologies for being a bad blogger. April 4, 2011, was the last date I wrote here and it's not that nothing has happened in my life since then (LOTS HAS HAPPENED), the truth is, I haven't figured how to come to terms with the last 9 months of my life. I've always been a person that has not been afraid of my emotions. I've never had difficulty talking. I've prided myself on knowing who I am, what I want, and making anything possible with the power of kindness and hard work. But, over that time period, something changed; I changed. I got scared and angry; my life was going well--very well--and falling apart all at the same time. For the first time in my life, I didn't know which way was up or who I was. Oddly, in that last sentence, where I wrote "up", I mistakenly wrote "hope". Even that says something about what has changed in me. Ever the eternal optimist, my mind wrote the phrase "I didn't know which way was hope". Have I lost hope?
As I've prepared to sit down and write, I had to find some inspiration; something comforting, yet eye-opening; something that would light the fire under my ass, but let me sink in this steel and whicker chair I'm currently sitting. Music has always been that for me. But this called for more than just music. I needed a music-filled movie--and not just any movie. A movie that is beautiful in story, scope, cinematography, AND music. You all know it and you all loved it, even though you probably don't want to admit it: TITANIC. That score gets me every time.
So, here I sit, at a familiar table by candlelight with a cup of iced mocha and a beautiful film playing behind me, reminding me of times when I believed in so much...
Let's go back. April was a fairly hectic, but truly exciting month. I had just accepted the offer to work as a first-year apprentice at the Barn Theatre in Augusta, MI. My focus was set purely on those four months I'd be spending away from the city I so dearly love and the friends that make it feel like home. The only thing standing in the way was a series of payments for which I needed to back up a bank account. Thankfully, I had the good sense to plan ahead and start saving around this time last year. Long story short, I worked as much as humanly possible and saved an extra $1200 every month. I said a fond farewell on Sunday, May 15 at Red Sky on the east side with some very dear friends after my Level 2 Improv graduation show. Good times, good times. The next day I flew home to Ohio, spent the day with my mom, dad, sister, brother, and my brother's girlfriend. We had dinner together and enjoyed each other's company. I will always remember that dinner...
On the afternoon of May 17, I arrived at the Barn. Immediately, I heard the murmurs about my arrival. Being a group of theatre people, there were many conversations going on--my favorite of which being "The lumberjack is here!" (That was you, K Ross!) Anyway, before I knew it, the Barn felt like home. I got up every morning and for the first time in my life, I was excited to go to work...every day. My pay was nothing to write home about, unless I was writing home to ask for money. But that didn't matter. I've never had a job that I truly loved--this is what every person dreams: doing what you love and loving what you do. I make in a single shift at my restaurant what I made in two to four weeks at the Barn. However, I would take that job over waiting tables in Times Square any day. In more recent news, I just received my application for my 2nd summer at the Barn and have already filled it out. Can't wait to go back!
The summer was going perfectly. I was performing every day and night, being an actor, learning how to make quick decisions on stage, training myself to learn parts in less than two weeks and have them performance-ready. On top of the world, that's where you would have found me. Then my world starting fall apart one morning...
As usual, I woke up at 8:30 on the morning of July 16 to the sound of my alarm. When I reached over to dismiss the alarm and get my day started, I saw I had several missed calls from my mom, brother, and sister. They were going to be making the drive up to Augusta that day to see me in CHICAGO. My assumption was they were having car troubles and weren't going to be making it up that night. If only... I tried to call my mom, but it wouldn't connect. So, I called my brother; he picked up.
"Have you talked to anyone else?" he asked.
"No, what's up?"
"Dad had a massive heart attack this morning..." it felt as if my heart stopped, dropped, and rolled, "...he didn't make it."
Within the first 45 seconds of that day, my had already lost my father and my world was forever changed. My brother handed the phone off to my mom who simply said, "Nick, I don't know what to do. I'm too young to be a widow."
Shock is the word people use to label the feeling you get when you hear news such as this and your body reacts by releasing adrenaline and other hormones that cause so many chemical and emotional reactions you truly have no idea what to do. Me? After having the phone handed off to my mother, who was experiencing a completely different aspect of shock and grief, I assured her I'd be home soon. I walked out onto the porch of the house I was living in for the summer and told the man I was living with, "Paul, my dad died this morning." Soon, I was trying to call my boss and let him know, but as cell phone service can be spotty in those remote areas of the world, we ended up playing phone tag and I eventually just met him at the barn. Upon informing him of what happened, he spoke his condolences and told me to meet him in his office in 5 minutes. In that time I broke the news to exactly one other person, our director who inevitably would be replacing me onstage for a few nights. When I met my boss in his office, he had already gotten plans in motion to give me whatever I needed to get home; they had checked flights, bus schedules, rental cars, and had made calls to see who would be available to drive me to Columbus. In a matter of minutes, this company I had joined in Michigan became family, looking out for me as if we had known each other years. Shortly after that, I emerged out of his office and went down to the pit and met the rest of the company that had already had the news broken to them. Tears in their eyes, in my infinite abilities to make any moment awkward, I looked around and simply asked, "Who died?" I proceeded to say something, I'm not sure what it was, maybe something along the lines of "don't worry about me, concentrate on the show, I'll see you in a few days. I gotta go bury my dad." As we broke from pit meeting, I called out to my friend Katrina who already had her phone out. She was calling her mom to tell her I was taking the car. Then, her and Jenna took me out to breakfast, filled up the car with gas, bought me snacks for the road, and sent me on my way.
Looking back, it probably wasn't the safest of things for me to do, but I drove home alone that day. I had the first of many conversations with my dad while driving. Knowing what my role is in my family, I started writing a eulogy in my head and sang through what I knew my mom would ask me to sing at the funeral: "How Great Thou Art" and "You Raise Me Up". It's probably by the grace of God and my father, that I safely drove home, fighting through tears. (She did ask me to sing those two songs and I did--with the help of a couple anti-anxiety pills. I don't really remember how it all went, but I've been told it wasn't too bad.)
I arrived at home around 5 to my Aunt Connie in the driveway. She simply said, "Oh, Nick..." and hugged me for a few minutes. When I made it inside, I saw my mom and just about lost it when she pulled me into a strong hug and said to me, "He loved you kids so much." I tried to sit, but I had to do something. I knew my dad would want to be buried wearing the colors of the country he so dearly loved and for which he would have laid his life down. As I stood in my parents' closet, I looked at the two tiers of his clothes on the left-hand side of the closet and had one of those moments you think only exist in the movies: I just grabbed as many articles of his clothing I could and squeezed with all my might, tears streaming uncontrollably. Without much thought, I picked out a navy blue, double-breasted suit, white shirt, and a collection of ties. It escapes me now, but I'm sure we settled on a red tie.
The next few days were filled with accepting visitors arriving with what seemed like truck loads of food, making the proper arrangements, and ensuring we were all going to be OK. On Tuesday, July 19, we accepted visitors at Egan-Ryan Funeral Home. Between wakes, we had dinner at my Aunt Rita and Uncle Bill's house. I still don't know how I functioned that week, I still don't know how I function now, especially when I know there were so many things left to do with my dad in this life. Through this whole process, I had countless people approach me saying how proud my dad was of me and much he loved me. All these wonderful words coming from people I didn't really know all that well and felt they knew me because my dad always talked about his kids. We realized that week how much my dad kept his family together because all those hours he spent on the road he spent talking with friends and family.
The day before he died, he was going to arrive home earlier than normal, so he called my mom and they went to Longhorn (where my sister works) to have dinner. They went home that night, said I love you, and went to bed. At 5 am, he woke up having some pretty bad back pain and trouble breathing. He woke my mom and told her to call an ambulance. After the paramedics had arrived, they informed him they would need to get him into the stretcher downstairs and asked how he suggest they do that. In true "Kevin-fashion", he replied, "Well, if you let me get out of this f*cking bed, I'll walk myself down..." They got him on the stretcher, my mom told him she was going to change and grab him some clothes for him, and she would see him at the hospital. When she arrived, the doctor said, "I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but we've been working on him for the last 35 minutes." "What do mean 'working on him'?" she asked. "He went into cardiac arrest and we've been doing chest compressions." At 6:30 am, my dad passed away at the age of 57.
At his funeral on July 20, one of his cousins came up to me and said he had called the day before he died and mentioned that he may get to go to Michigan to see me perform and he was so excited. She said she believed he was filled with so much joy and pride that he was going to get to see me perform that his heart just couldn't take it.
My eulogy started with stating that it was no secret that my dad and I had a very difficult relationship my entire life. However, over the last couple of years, it seemed that things were getting much better; we were having the kind of father-son relationship I had always hoped to have with him. Now, looking back, I have so many regrets in how I treated him in ways that don't reflect how much I love him. He was hard on me, but I was hard on him, too. My mom has always insisted we didn't get along because we were too much alike. When I said that in my eulogy, the entire congregation lightly chuckled and nodded their heads in agreement. I think the jury's still out on that one... My brother, sister, and mom all spoke, as well as a few other family members, because everyone has a "Kevin Story". He really was a great man that would do anything for anyone. He may have been gruff, but that was just part of his charm. My brother's girlfriend May got up and said, "I don't have anything funny to say. But the one regret I have now that Kevin is gone is that I never told him how much I love his son. Because I do. Andy, I love you so much, and Nick, Laura, Rita..." We all realized at that moment that we all do love each other a great deal and now we take as many opportunities as possible to tell each other that. My dad was not a man of many emotions, but he did love his family fiercely. We all miss him each and every day and hope that with time we'll come to understand why God has dealt us this crappy hand and taken away man that had so much life left to live. We have so many memories and stories to tell for years to come, we just wish he were here to tell them with us.
I think that'll have to do for the time being. Titanic is about to hit an iceberg and I'm a little emotionally drained right now. I promise to post again very soon, because there's still so much to talk about.
Until next time...
