Pete

I first met Pete DiStaulo back in 1985, when I joined a small marketing company as director of their supermarket relations effort — I was, if you will, an in-house consultant to their clients who were all just starting loyalty programs.  About my age, Pete was the VP of IT, and we hit it off immediately, my no-bullshit management style being a perfect match for his Jersey-City no-bullshit technical expertise.  I don’t know what company management expected from our friendship, but to their consternation I was more often on his side rather than on their side, because while Pete knew next to nothing about marketing and Management knew absolutely nothing about IT systems, I knew a great deal about both, and I was able to temper their sky-high expectations of IT with the realities thereof.

Anyway, Pete and I became family friends, in that not only did he and Connie get along, but his wife Margie became part of our little IT circle.

Pete was a small, tubby man with a receding hairline, while Margie was a large, overpowering woman (a senior nursing sister in a local Jersey hospital) who terrified everyone she met — her husband not excepted, she insulted and verbally abused him constantly — but both Connie and I thought she was wonderful.  Connie’s genteel Beverly-Hills politeness contrasted so much with Margie’s Jersey-City brusqueness that one would have thought that they’d never get along;  but we and the DiStaulos got along famously, and had dinner together more times than I can remember, more often than not causing consternation among the restaurants’ customers with our peals of helpless laughter.  By the way, Margie wasn’t Italian, but Irish.  “And I had to learn how to cook his fuckin’ guinea food, because he hated anything that wasn’t pasta.  Jesus Christ, what a fuckin’ nightmare this marriage has been.”)

I left the marketing company after a while — hired away by one of their biggest clients to rebuild and relaunch their failing loyalty program — but Pete and I stayed close friends.  In fact, when I left the supermarket company three years later to start up my own consultancy, Pete left his company to become my partner.

Time passed, and sadly, there was just not enough IT business for Pete to stay on, but even though he left to head up a local bank’s IT department, there was no rancor — in fact, we became closer friends than ever, talking on the phone at least a couple times a month and still having dinners together as a family thing.

His son Pete Jr. (“Petey”, duh) finished his college degree at Tufts and was offered a couple of jobs:  one in downtown Manhattan and the other in Chicago.  Amazingly (he being a Joizee boy), Petey turned down the City job for Chicago, and his move to the Windy City happened only a month or so after Connie and I moved to the lakefront.

Of course, Pete and Margie had helped Petey with his move, and when they all arrived in Chicago, needless to say we had dinner at our apartment in Lakeview.  To our general astonishment, it turned out that Petey didn’t have a sofa for his new place, and we had discovered that our large sofa took up too much room in our apartment — so then and there we gave it to Petey, and he and his dad moved it over to the new apartment.

Incidentally, the Manhattan job that Petey DiStaulo had turned down?  It was with Cantor Fitzgerald, on the top floor of the World Trade Center, and his start date would have been September 1, 2001.  (Yeah, I got the shivers, too.)

Living across the country from each other only meant that the DiStaulos and Du Toits had fewer dinners together, but Connie was working for Ernst & Young in NJ, so every time she had to go there for a management meeting or the like, I’d go with her so we could get together with Pete and Margie, and our ongoing phone calls were frequent and needless to say, cordial.

Then Connie got ill, and Margie was distraught — as a nurse, she knew all about cancer, of course — and now she started calling Connie, often, for updates on her condition.

When Connie passed away in February 2017, of course I called Pete to tell him the tragic news, but I only got his voice mail so I just left him a message.

The next evening I got a call from his phone, but it was Margie on the line.

“Kim, I don’t know how to tell you this, but Pete passed away last November.”
“Damn Margie… why didn’t you call and tell us?”
“I couldn’t — I just couldn’t.  I didn’t know how Connie would take the news, and I was afraid she wouldn’t be able to handle it.”
I thought about that for about three seconds, and said, “Margie, I don’t think she could have handled it.  Pete going away might well have pushed her over the edge.”
“That’s what I was afraid of.”
“Margie, thank you for not calling us.  Please don’t feel badly about it, because as hard as it is to think about, you did the right thing, I promise you.”
“Good, because the kids have been giving me no end of shit for not calling youse.”
“Margie, what happened to Pete?”
A pause, then, “That fuckin’ asshole.”
Despite myself, I started laughing helplessly.  “What did he do?”
“You know he fell and busted his hip, right?”

“Yup.  But I thought he was doing okay.”
“Is that what he told you?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Kim, he wasn’t doing okay, the lying little shit.  He couldn’t get up the stairs, we had to convert his office (“awfiss”) to a bedroom, and he was basically bedridden for four months.”
“Ah man… so what happened?”
“Donald Trump killed him.”
“WHAT?”
“On Election Day, Pete absolutely insisted on getting out of bed, making me half-carry him to the fuckin’ car, and I had to drive him to the fuckin’ polling station so he could cast his fuckin’ vote for Donald fuckin’ Trump.”
I couldn’t say anything because I was incoherent with laughter.  Which then stopped.
“And then the next day my Pete just died.  The autopsy showed a pulmonary embolism that was probably caused by his being bedridden, and it was dislodged  by his activity of the day before, that going to vote for Trump.”

And there you have it.  Donald Trump killed my great friend Pete;  well, according to his widow, anyway.

Despite her offhandedness and abuse, Margie was absolutely devoted to Pete (“Kim, he took my fuckin’ virginity!“), and he to her.  Of course, it was easy to see why, because they were the most warm and wonderful people I have ever been privileged to meet.

Of course, no prizes for guessing what triggered this reminiscence from me.

I wonder if Margie voted for Trump, this time round… I’d give her a call, but a couple years after Connie died, my last attempt met a “no longer in operation” tone, and Margie too disappeared from my life.

I miss the DiStaulos, terribly.

Front Line Analogy

I like to think of Life as a journey to the WWI frontline trenches, said trenches being old age, where death is almost certain if you stay there long enough.  (Feel free to spin this out in your imagination.)

I was drawn to the analogy when reading about Bruce Willis being given birthday best wishes by his ex-wife Demi Moore.  Willis is suffering from aphasia , and has just turned 69.

I’m 69.

And here’s why I’m thinking of old age as being like being in the trenches.

There are so many ways to die, at any age, but if one dies at a young age it’s more a result of either a random tragedy (brain cancer at 39, or a heart attack at 18, and so on) or else the equivalent of playing Russian roulette, say by smoking a pack of unfiltered Camels every day, riding a motorcycle without a helmet or living in the South Side projects of Chicago.  (The WWI equivalent would be dying in a car accident while driving to the station or losing your head by sticking it out of the moving train’s window, i.e. going before your time.)

But once you’re in the frontline trenches — that being old age — there are any number of ways that can snuff out Life’s Little Candle, because the Boche are throwing all sorts of shit at you:  shelling, poison gas and snipers being the equivalent of kidney disease, aortic aneurism, stroke, heart attack, diverticulitis and so on.  You get the picture.

I have been extraordinarily lucky so far, in that pretty much all my ailments have been recoverable either by my own body’s healing function or else by medication.  (That said medication becomes more necessary is borne out by the fact that pills once taken for a day or two are now a permanent fixture and the morning routine involves something like a saunter along the Rx shelves at CVS.)  And my physical condition has actually improved recently in that I’ve shed a lot of weight — granted, through said medication, but whatever — and I’m reasonably spry as a result.

But there’s no fucking cure for aphasia, Alzheimer’s, Lou Gehrig’s disease or any of the brain ailments which end one’s life horribly.  And sure, you can get those at any time during your life — but once you reach the Golden Years, those illnesses become more and more likely, and the Golden Years become more like the Golden Shower Years, where Life pisses on you from all directions.  (And I’m not even talking about extraneous squirts of urine like the IRS or Bidenflation, don’t get me started.)

What the hell.  So far, so good.  I’m in decent health for my age, the doctor tells me, and would be in better shape if I just quit eating all that shit that’s bad for me but which gives me such pleasure that I refuse to quit.

Screw that.  If there’s some Boche sniper out there loading up a bullet with my name on it, I might as well eat that piece of lovely, fatty boerewors, right?

And now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s time for my Breakfast Gin.  Cheers.

Hammer Down

Oh, bugger it all:

Fox News star Charles Krauthammer reveals he has weeks to live

It’s cancer, that vile illness.

And on a personal note:  I just learned this very morning that my closest childhood friend Mark Pennels is also in the final stages of cancer, with maybe a week or two left.  I spoke to him in December when I was in South Africa, and he was cancer-free then, so this latest episode has been a total bastard.

And you all know about Connie, taken from me just last year by the same ailment.

I think I’ll just go to my room and pull the covers up over my head for the rest of the day…

365 Days

One year ago last night, my wife Connie died of ovarian cancer.

In many cultures, there’s almost a mandatory mourning period of a full year after the death of a loved one, and I now know why. It has to do with anniversaries: “Oh, last year this time we were celebrating something together. This year… I’m doing it alone.” Those add up, and they take a toll on you as that horrible year drags on. But with the merciful passage of time — and it’s true: time does heal the worst of wounds — those little aches, those pangs of shared memories, fade and lose their sting. This year, I’ll remember an occasion from last year and this time, it will involve just me. Not as painful.

I have spoken many times about how my friends all over the world rallied around me and helped me get away from this most personal tragedy, so I’m not going to repeat any of it other than to say that they collectively gave me a reason to carry on living: not that I was going to do something foolish like cap myself, of course, but they got me to do things that helped dull the pain of memory, kept me busy, and above all made me realize that I still have so many things to live for. The alternative was for me to sit in a one-room garret and stare at the walls — which my friends, as they told me in no uncertain terms, were not going to allow me to do. Instead, once I’d taken care of the soul-destroying minutiae of death, I sold the house, traveled, and did the sorts of things which reminded me of the things I hadn’t been able to do before, but could now do. I did those things, and I will do again.

It’s called living. Life goes on after death and now, one year after that most profound tragedy from which I thought I’d never recover, I’ve come out from my period of mourning with renewed purpose, renewed hope for the future, and a renewed determination to live my life to its absolute fullest. That feeling, that intention, is not something that happened suddenly, or just this morning; it’s been a gradual process which began at some point (I have no idea when) and grew stronger and stronger as the year went on.

Now it’s been three hundred and sixty-five days since Connie died, and if you’d told me then that I’d be feeling the way I do today, I’d not have believed you.

Now, at last, I think I’m healed (although of course there may well be the occasional twinge of pain — I’ve felt a few just writing this post). All I needed was to get through the horrible anniversary to put the seal on it, and thanks to the boundless support from my friends, my family and my Readers, I made it.

Now it’s time for adventure, time to live again.

And if you’ll all indulge me, I’m going to continue to chronicle some of those adventures on these very pages. That is the real reason why I started blogging again — there’s no point in having an adventure when you can’t share it with anyone — and it’s only when I wrote this post that I realized it. (And by the way: a huge round of applause for Tech Support BobbyK, without whom I’d be snarled in incomprehensible Gordian techno-knot,  and you wouldn’t be reading any of this.)

So stick around: I’m going to drink deeply of Life in the years to come, and you’re going to share it with me. Enjoy the journey, because I most certainly plan to.


In Memoriam:

Constance Mary (Carlton) du Toit
14 May 1958 – 3 February 2017

Solitude

My friend Doc Russia is a very intelligent man. When we got the final diagnosis of The Mrs.’s cancer — that it would be a question of months or even weeks, not years — Doc told me that he was not going to let me stay by myself “in some little apartment, looking at four walls” (his words).

So, true to his word, when the end finally came, he moved me into his guest room where I’ve been ever since — except for when I’ve been living with Mr. Free Market’s family and The Englishman’s family, that is.

Until now.

Now, of course, I’m staying in Cornwall in a lovely cottage owned by The Englishman, and for the first time since February this year, I’m completely on my own.

So how does it feel, this living by yourself thing?

Many people talk of how when they finally come to live on their own, whether after death of a spouse or divorce, that there’s a wonderful sense of relief — that being on one’s own means that all your time is your own, that you have freedom to do whatever you want, even that you find things exactly where you left them, and so on. Last night, for example, I felt a little tired so I went to bed at about 9pm instead of my usual midnight-ish bedtime. Big mistake. As I’ve got older, I’ve come to need less sleep — or, to be more precise, a measured amount of sleep: about six to seven hours — so going to bed at 9 meant waking up at, yes, you guessed it, 4am with absolutely no chance of going back to sleep. Shit.

After a while, though, a thought occurred to me: I didn’t need to go back to sleep. I had nowhere to go in the morning, no place to be, and nothing that absolutely needed my attention. It’s called retirement, and I’m retired. Furthermore, if I were to feel tired later in the day because of my early awakening, I could just take a damn nap because I had nowhere to go, no place to be, and nothing that absolutely needed my attention.

Having established all that, there was only one thing to do, of course: I fell asleep in seconds and woke up just after 9am.

Then I walked downstairs after doing my Morning Things (meds, etc.) and walking into the kitchen, to find everything exactly as I’d left it the evening before: tidy (I’m a tidy person by nature) but with stuff lying on the counter that I would need to make breakfast. I still needed a few things so I walked up to the little grocery store and bought them, and when I got back to the cottage I put everything away and made myself breakfast. Which is when yet another realization came to me: this will be the pattern of the rest of your life.

I also don’t have a car, which means I can’t spend my days driving around the countryside like a dervish, being too busy to think. Now I have to take my time, literally, and in that time, all I really have are my thoughts for company.

Let me get one thing absolutely clear, at this point: I don’t mind being by myself — or at least, I’ve never minded being by myself before. The problem is that when you’ve lived as close to someone as I lived with The Mrs. for over twenty years, you get used to being not alone; and when you love your companion, that constant companionship is not a burden, it’s addictive.

For the first time in my life I feel alone, and it’s not a pleasant feeling.

This won’t last, of course. At some point I’ll either get used to being on my own, or else a miracle will occur and I won’t be on my own anymore.

This post, by the way, is not a cry for help, nor is it a gloomy one. In ten days’s time, I’ll be driving along the Midi with one of my oldest friends, and after that, I’ll be spending Christmas and New Year in London with an even older one. My time in Cornwall is therefore just an interlude, but it may well prove to be the most important part of this sabbatical.

But Doc sure called this one right. At this point, having spent so much time in other people’s homes and having been so busy doing things like hunting, carousing, watching cricket and football and driving all over the place, the shock of February has pretty much worn off. Had I moved into an apartment back then and spent my days looking at the walls with a future that was going to be just that, I’m not sure I could have coped. No, let me tell the truth here; I would have fallen apart.

Instead, my friends, my wonderful, caring friends have given me the chance to recover, a time to heal and a time during which I could put my mind at rest.

Now I’m ready to move on, to face what the rest of my life may bring me, and I promise you all, I intend to live it to the full.

Not Myself

I’m not normally a melancholy person, and apart from the obvious reason, I really have no idea why I feel that way now: the house sale closes on Monday, Daughter got a new job (yay!), the other kids are doing fine, and I have two trips, one local and one international to look forward to in June.

Yet there it is: today feels like an “empty” day, I feel crappy and unmotivated, and I shouldn’t be.

It doesn’t help that Doc Russia is away for the next week or so, slaughtering dangerous game in his annual African safari (see below); this means that I’m denied my usual “beer, scantily-clad women, loud music and friendly company” remedy for whatever is bringing me down. I’d love to have a few cocktails, but I can’t and never could drink by myself. This is a new thing for me; in the past, I was perfectly happy to be all by myself, and was seldom if ever depressed. Now, I hate being without companionship, and I feel lonely without it. Fuck.

I think I’ll head down to the DFW range for most of the day, and give several of my guns a workout, followed by a thorough cleaning.

Normal blogging service should resume tomorrow. Sorry about that, but I don’t think I’m quite done dealing with this bloody bereavement thing yet.