(Originally
published on 8/25/21)
Nowadays,
the obituaries are chock full of so many personalities who were—once upon a
time—young. It is downright unsettling. Men and women who were in their prime
when I was a boy are passing away. I was not a hockey fan, but I knew of Rod
Gilbert, who died this week at the age of eighty. I knew he was a future Hall
of Famer and distinctly remember his hockey card with the bright green
backdrop.
Throughout
my youth, my favorite pastime was
the American pastime at the time:
baseball. It seems like a day does not go by without a former baseball
player—an athlete whom I rooted for or against—dying or getting diagnosed with
Alzheimer’s. Recently, I read where J.R. Richard, Rennie Stennett, and Dick
Tidrow passed away. James Rodney Richard struck out over three hundred batters
in 1978 and 1979 and had a major stroke the next year at the age of thirty,
which prematurely ended his career. Rennie Stennett went seven for seven in a
game, a record that still stands. And when Dick Tidrow pitched for the Yankees
in the mid- to late-70s, my older brother imitated his distinctive windup and
mannerisms while playing stickball. These little snippets of memory were so
fresh because—honestly—it seemed like only yesterday when Richard, Stennett,
and Tidrow were professional baseball players plying their trades.
Several
weeks ago, an aunt of mine passed away two months shy of her 101st birthday.
From the Spanish flu to COVID-19, her life began in a picturesque mountain town
in Italy, Castelmezzano, before she emigrated to the shores of America in 1926
at the age of six. She lived through the Great Depression and then World War
II. The "the war to end all wars,”
World War I, did not live up to its
billing. Eventually, my aunt labored as a seamstress in New York City’s then-thriving
Garment District for decades until her retirement in 1985. She collected a
Social Security check for thirty-five years, an impressive feat in and of
itself.
My aunt’s
hobbies included walking, cooking, and baking. She made homemade pasta,
meatballs, and tomato sauce called “gravy”—an Italian thing. The woman produced
cakes and pastries that were uniquely hers like Graham cracker crust chocolate
pudding pie, cream puffs filled with vanilla pudding, and oatmeal cake with two
cups of sugar—one white and one brown. Strange, though, when people pass away,
their lifetime of accumulation does not go with them. Upon her death, my aunt’s
spice closet was brimming with every imaginable spice, including multiple
bottles of the same ones. Some bottles were unopened. As her cooking acumen
took a hit in her final years —it stands to reason—so did her spice use. Many
of those spice bottles had lapsed expiration dates going back twenty years.
Cleaning
out her spice cabinet struck me as emblematic of what is in store for me and,
yes, everybody else. I have all kinds of things that have meaning to me but will
not have meaning to anybody else. I will not have a presidential-like museum and
library in which to donate my photos, bric-a-brac, and papers, including old
test papers from St. John’s grammar school, Cardinal Spellman High School, and
Manhattan College.
I know my
aunt had every intention of using the three bottles of bay leaves in her spice
closet. But the finite end—in store for all of us—had other plans. So, from
this day forward, I am gradually divesting myself from many of my material
possessions and assorted ephemera. I like the thought of me getting rid of me.
There is more dignity involved in this do-it-yourself exercise. After all, in
writing the closing chapter, who better than I to recycle my high school
trigonometry tests?
(Photos
from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)
