Two Brothers… Two Lives… Two Deaths

The Joy of Life, Laughter and One Last Joke — Part II From The Mountain

The King of Quips

Tommy was four years younger than me. We were jokers, vagabonds, carefree, and loved life, dogs, and women… in that order. We spent our lives trying to determine what we wanted to do when we grew up. Neither of us ever determined what we wanted to do when we grew up either.

Both of my brothers loved to joke around, but Tommy was the “King of Quips”. Tom had a knack for one-liners that were true zingers. He had a very quick wit and loved playing jokes. The warning something was coming from him was a twinkle in his eye and the slightest of smiles.

I had dropped out of college (a second time) in the Summer of 1973 and headed to the East Coast for a job, stopping off in NY to see my family. I literally stumbled onto a keg party upon my arrival in the Shire (parents' backyard) where I learned Tommy had joined the Air Force. Now, this was very unexpected.

Our Mom, who could chug a beer… 12 oz. under 3 seconds… was drinking Tom’s buddies under the table. She had won bets doing this in college raising money to help to put my dad through law school. She provided this bit of information that evening. Who knew?

It was also at this party I met and fell in love with a girl who stole my heart. Tommy introduced us. I never ever did make it farther east. Anyway, that this all happened within the first 24 hours of my arrival from Ohio turned out to be a huge life change for me.

I always wondered if introducing me to her may have been his plan for me to stay. Doubtful, but Tom and I began a long bonding process ourselves after that party of his. A part of that bonding was, of course, discovering his wicked sense of humor and how funny he could be.

He was always much more outgoing, much more self-assured than I was. At least this is what I thought back then. He was popular. He always made others laugh. People just wanted to hang out with him and be around him. His humor and smile and laughter were contagious.

Our lives were both rather eclectic. He and I followed a different drummer than most others. We both did what we wanted, lived where we wanted, and enjoyed what life offered. When I left NY Tommy then followed me out to Arizona later that year. That was the start of his own journey.

We had an apartment in “Sin City”, an area in downtown Tempe where students at ASU lived. We weren’t students. But there were a lot of really good-looking women. That worked for us. And parties. It was 1976–77. We ended up working for a Yugoslavian couple, very cool people, running a restaurant for them. Tommy had a captured audience and everyone loved him. I ran the kitchen and he ran the front end.

He had a pet tarantula that sat on his shoulder in the apartment. The girls loved it. Who has a pet tarantula? Then one day it leaped off his shoulder, about 6 or 7 feet across the room, and scurried under the couch. People ran. Girls screamed. Really scared the hell out of us. Who knew they could jump?! Tommy set him free… just outside the door. More screaming.

We had a lot of fun living together, working in the same restaurants together, enjoying our lives together. We even dated two girls who were roommates together from ASU.

He and I loved those times back then and I will always remember them fondly. When Tommy moved away, things changed. He always left his mark on others. His humor and laugh were infectious. That was possibly the first time I realized how big of an effect he had on people, myself included. I always missed him after he left.

He moved on to Alaska but ended up working on an oil rig in North Dakota, living in a tent in the winter up there. He was not only funny but also a tad nuts. Winter in North Dakota in a tent. Just let that sink in.

He moved around to Texas and Louisiana, and eventually, he headed back to NY, got married and had a daughter, and then got divorced. This marked the worst time in his life. Everything seemed to turn upside down suddenly.

Eventually, Tommy ended up in NYC working as a bartender in Manhattan. He met his soon-to-be 2nd wife looking for a place to live that was affordable and not a closet. Yup. He actually lived in a converted janitor’s closet in a building in Manhattan for $1500/mo. So he rented her basement apartment on the North Shore of Long Island and moved in.

She was English, from a wealthy family, an uppity kinda woman. Really there was no “kind of”. She was as uppity as people come. Very privileged. Our family always wondered why he did that. She rarely smiled or laughed that I ever saw. They were complete opposites.

She disliked our entire family and thought we were all a bad influence on Tommy. Our mom couldn’t stand her. Mom was not someone you wanted to dislike you. She didn’t mince words. She was 100% Irish, drank whiskey, smoked cigs, cussed, and was everything this woman hated. I always loved this about Mom.

We always enjoyed when there was interaction, waiting for Mom to go full-tilt bonkers on her, but to my mom’s credit, she always held her tongue for Tommy’s sake. But the fuse was short and it always made things interesting.

So he was commuting to the City for a sales job which got old rapidly. He decided to start his own business. Since that had become my forte (starting small businesses) we talked a lot. He started a dog-walking business. Eventually, he was netting almost $100k a year. Go figure.

He loved dogs, always had dogs, and was very good at working with them and training them, even though no one ever taught him. A dog whisperer he was. It just came naturally to him. So he was finally in a place in life he enjoyed, living in a small town with access to the beach and water, in a place where he literally knew everyone.

The hard part of this story.

I had mentioned Tommy had a great sense of humor. He lived to make people laugh. He was good at it. He was living on Long Island and it was 2013. I lived in Arizona still.

He called me one day.

He wasn’t laughing.

He was crying.

A minute later I was also.

Tommy told me he was dying. He had Esophageal Cancer and was already Stage 4. It’s a very insidious form of cancer. There is no cure. Most people rarely live for more than a few months. Tommy was determined to beat it, or as he said to me “die trying”.

It turned out he had had an issue with acid reflux and saw the doctor for it. The result was the discovery of a tumor the size of a tennis ball. No pain. No forewarning. You may live 3 months… or maybe 6 months, said the doctor.

Life is great, your health is great, everything is going well, and then in a matter of minutes… it’s all over. How does that happen? I can’t begin to imagine what that would be like.

We talked … a lot. I will forever admire his courage. He developed a warrior attitude and put together a game plan to live as long as he could and a “bucket list” to enjoy as much as he could. He passed about 18 months later in August of 2014. He never once stopped joking, laughing, or just being himself.

About four months prior to his passing he took a trip out to Arizona where he was able to visit with me, my family, and many of our relatives for a week. We made arrangements to have as much family out there as we could. He spent time with me and my girlfriend, my kids, my granddaughter, our sister, and her kids, and our other brother Andy’s kids and their kids. Something none of us will ever forget.

I often find myself, as I do now, asking no one in particular “Why?” Almost every day, my thought is “This isn’t the way our lives were to be”.

Tommy was thinking of making a move one day, selling his business and moving, possibly to Hilton Head or to the mountains near a lake. We often talked about it. We all had similar goals in the end.

Our other brother Andy and I had often talked about a cabin in the mountains one day with a front porch looking over the mountains. It was indeed a goal of ours in life.

Today, I have a cabin in the mountains and a large porch, with long-range mountain views, located between two lakes. And every day I sit here and look out over the mountains draped in clouds, thinking of my two brothers. Every day.

As it should be Tommy left this world with one last joke. His best. To assist him with the pain and sleepless nights, he started smoking pot after all those years. His attorney drove to New Jersey to get it for him.

When I flew out to see him one last time, we’d go for a walk in the evenings. He’d yell to his wife “Walking the dog!” Now, having a dog walking business it wasn’t unusual to have that as a slogan. So he had 200 hats printed up that said “Walking the Dog” about 3 months before he passed away.

On our last evening walk together, before I had to leave, he and I were across the street and under some trees from where he lived, smoking a joint. It was a warm, humid summer night in early July, and the street was lit up by a single street light. We were the only two people around. He was explaining how unhappy his wife was that he was smoking pot. He really didn’t care. It helped him sleep and it helped with the pain he said.

As we stood under a moonlit evening sky there he began to chuckle a bit. He got that gleam in his eye and a smile. He laughed that infectious laugh of his under that moonlit night. I laughed as well. How could you not? And then he turned to me, still laughing, and he said…

“I got to play one last joke on everyone. Those hats I told you about… (now he’s laughing quite hard) when I’m gone there’s going to be 200 people around town here wearing “Walking the Dog” hats… business owners, people from church… and you know what? None of them will have a clue that “Walking the Dog” means they’re going outside to smoke a joint.”

That was my brother Tommy!

Two brothers, two lives, and a lifetime of great memories. But this is not how things were supposed to be. Not at all. To my last breath, I will always cherish what we had, but I will always ask “Why?”.

Part I of this story is HERE.