Not fade away

 

December 25, 1998

 

Garrick called just as we were going to sleep on Dec. 23, the answering machine coming to life before I could find the phone and reattach the cord that had fallen out from the phone in the bedroom.

Later, Garrick said the same thing happened when he called Frank and Dawn, a matter he found puzzling and ironic in a year when all ironies seemed to have become ironed out and boring, as far as the Garley Gang was concerned.

"Am I waking you?" his gruff voice asked.

"No, no," I  assured him. We had just moved into the house and had boxes everywhere and our greatest efforts each day came from finding places for the content of at least one more box. It was an exhausting effort, and one that sent us to be earlier than usual.

"I can call back," Garrick said.

"No, I mean it, we're not asleep."

Garrick had called to make arrangements for our annual get together. He had just dropped Pauly off at is sister's house, and was instructed thus to hold our Christmas Eve gathering closer to that location, rather than in the traditional spot further west. The spot varied over time, but generally centeredÛ½around where Frank and Dawn were living, starting off in 1974 in Haledon, then moving as they moved to two different locations in Paterson and finally to their home in western New Jersey.

An though I missed a year or two since 1974, Frank and Dawn maintained their ritual unfailingly since, inviting us to join them. This was the first year we gathered away from their place. Yet even then, the location had some historic significance to us, the old Golden Star restaurant which as teenagers we had frequented.

We had to pick up Pauly and bring him, and as usual, had to do some shopping before meeting the others, following Pauly through the Barnes and Noble as if his kids, to finally meet Garrick, Frank and Dawn over lunch. It was not the same. Frank's mother had died in November, someone who had grown progressively ill over the years, but had managed to make the yearly celebration with us for Christmas. But in some ways, the holiday had changed permanently three years ago, when we held the celebration without Hank (who had died the previous spring).

While Pauly did his best to be his old self, the table felt empty, as if two places were not filled, and could not be filled. When we parted, I felt a touch of sadness, feeling the passing of time most acutely. Since 1987, this holiday ritual has become a gauge for watching my friends age, something sad, not happy, and I felt that, too. In 1987, I saw Frank and Dawn's kid greet Garrick at the door of their Paterson apartment and realized that we had become like uncles to her, the way my uncles were to me at her age. It scared me. I sank into midlife crisis from which I have not yet fully emerged. This year, that kid got married, one more mark in our passage towards death.

After lunch, Pauly insisted on some more shopping, and then, dessert, not at the Golden Star, but at Kalico Kitchen, where the old gang spent many many hours a day.

Nothing had changed. Not the fire place. Not the chairs. Even the same man greeted us, though without the outrage he had when we were all younger. I ordered Pecan pie, which as in the past, they did not have.

Again, I was conscious of missing people, of all those who had sat with us there in the past, people if not dead then too far away to make this spiritual journey with us.

Pauly sensed this, too, as we left, saying his missed the way Hank seemed to hunker over his hamburger, slapping our hands when we tried to steal his French fries.

I saw that image in my head so vividly, I cannot forget it now: I miss Hank; I can't forget him, even if Pauly says some of Hank's memories had begun to fade for him.

They don't fade for me, only the people do.