Contemplating Loss

 

Lately, even though my cancer has gone into remission and I’ve been able to build a nice online teaching practice, I ask myself why have I been so depressed? Thinking about this I realized I must feel a profound sense of loss.

 

The first time I actually felt loss was when my grandmother, Angelina  De Rosa, passed away. I was 20 years old. Grandma was the matriarch of the family on my mother’s side. I adored my grandmother. As a child, whenever my mother would visit her, I always tagged along. When in  high school I would visit her on my own because school was only four blocks away. When I was twenty I was waiting for a new car to be delivered from the dealer when she went into the hospital. A few weeks later the car came and I was the designated driver for my mother and her sisters. It was the first time I visited her. She was in a coma.

 

I said to her “hello Grandma”. She came out of the coma and asked , “ did you get your new car?” I answered, “yes”, and she went back into the coma. It was the only time she woke up .

A few days later she died. Instead of feeling loss, I was angry and it lasted a few years.

 

Then my Aunt Mildred suddenly died when a blood vessel in her brain burst. We were all in shock. I was very close to her and her children. She would babysit my brother when my mother went back to work and as a teenager I spent my summers in Huntington Long Island with them. Loss

My Aunt Christiana died  after that. She was matriarch after my grandmother. Loss. As children  we spent every Saturday night at her house. While the parents played polka, the kids ( my cousins) would play together. To this day I am grateful for that time because my cousins and I are still very close. Christina’s son Victor died shortly after that. Loss

 

 

My Aunt Ameilia  died a while back and the truth is I don't remember why, but it was a shock to the family as well as my Uncle Frank. He died of lung cancer. Because he serve in the army during World War II, he was given a Veteran's burial with a four gun salute. It was very impressive but I still felt horrible when he died and I sometimes think of him whenever I shave. He taught and gave me my first shave when I was 13 years old. Loss.

 

 

Then in December, 1976, my father died. That night staying at my mother’s house I was trying to sleep but I couldn’t stop crying when suddenly I heard my father say to me ,“ go to sleep Dom, go to sleep”. The next thing I knew it was the next morning. For months I could feel my father’s presence. Loss. About three months later I knew he was gone. I hardly ever feel him now and its’ been 42 years.

 

After my father the next devastating loss was my cousin Vera.

Vera was absolutely beautiful.  Both my mother and I adored her Whenever I would take my mother to visit her sister Florence I would visit with Vera who lived upstairs. Carol and I visited her when she was at Roosevelt hospital for a special operation for Pancreatic cancer. Although she was 66 years old, she looked like she did when she was 28.  When she died I couldn’t stop weeping. It was like I was saying goodbye to part of my childhood.

 

The next big loss was my mother. Oddly enough  even though my brother and I  were at her bedside when she died, it brutally affected me then.  I hardly felt her around  after her passing and the loss didn’t last long.

 

When my close friend, pianist Dennis Moorman died it was a shock. Dennis and I were friends and musical partners since the mid-eighties.  We created some great music together. Dennis was on dialysis for years. The first time he had a kidney transplant he almost died. 20 years later he decided to have another one. His wife Linette called and said he was in the hospital. Carol and I rushed to see him. He looked great. He was happy and smiling.

 

The next day Linette called and told us the transplant didn’t work and Dennis had died. Linette spoke to Carol first. She was concerned how it would affect me since I had open heart surgery a few months before. It affected me badly. At the wake and at the burial I was beside myself bawling like a child. That feeling stayed for a while, but eventually I settled down, but I miss him and our music and our conversations. He once said he considered me “one of the brothers”. Loss.

 

My Aunt Virginia died a few years ago. It was a shock that lasted a long time. My Aunt Virginia, my Uncle Tony and me would take my mother to see her oncologist every few months.

We actually had a good time and it was nice being together.

After my mother died I would speak to my aunt Virginia every week or every other week just to see how she was doing. It kept me close to the family. All my Aunts and Uncles and some cousins are gone and I miss them all. Loss.

There have been other losses throughout the years. My cousin Donna died a few years ago and it was a hard one to handle. She was the first one to meet my wife Carol because she picked us up at the train station to go to an anniversary party. Loss

 

I’ve been fortunate throughout my life having many friends, but 'best friends' is another story.  One of my best friends is Mitchell May. We met on the worse musical  job in the city.

That’s a whole another story. Mitchell ( bass) and I formed a duo and a trio with another friend, drummer Tony Lupo who I met in 1962 and stayed friends till his death 3 years ago.  The two or three of us would rehearse at Mitchell’s apartment every week where I got to know his wife Judith and his best friend Jerry. Jerry eventually married Dorothy and we all became good friends. Then Jerry died-loss. Next was Dorothy-loss, but the biggest loss was Judith. Till this day  Mitchell feels the loss and I feel it through him.

 

When my childhood friend, Joe Mattera, decided not to have dialysis  for treatment of his failing kidneys I knew it would be days if not hours before he died. Joe was my childhood big brother.

 

 He taught me how to play sports and he was my biggest musical fan. He had all my recordings and when he came back to visit his daughter in New York City, he always made sure we could get together. When I was asked to say something at his zoom memorial, I wrote two pages about our friendship but I was too upset to read it. My wife Carol took over for me. I was also asked to record a Monk tune for him which I did. They used the music for background as photographs of Joe throughout his lifetime were shown. Loss

My wife, Carol’s  mother passed and I was in the room when her father died and a year ago her brother passed. I still feel her pain and a sense of loss. 

Throughout the years many of my musician friends have passed giving me a sense of loss, but none has affected me as much as the recent last four.

 

 

Five months ago, my wife’s best friend, Ann Ratray passed away.

Ann ( actor, teacher and former Miss Rhode Island and winner of the the Miss Congeniality at the Miss America contest) and Carol were best  friends since they were teenagers. I met Anne in 1989. Both Carol and Ann lived in the same building.

Ann immediately accepted me as part of her family. We celebrated every Christmas Eve together. Her son Devin  (Home Alone’s Buzz) took guitar lessons from me and Luke photographed me for my press kit and her husband, Peter and I have been good friends for years and he cuts my hair once a month. 

 

When Ann got sick, she was eventually bedridden for months and then one afternoon Luke (her oldest son) called and said the end was near. Carol and I went downstairs, but Ann was hanging on. We left  to have  a quick dinner but Luke called and said Anne had passed. 

Both Carol and I went downstairs and we saw Ann, lying in her pink robe, gone. It’s an image that stays with me all the time. Loss

 

 

 

A few weeks later we had to put to sleep our cat Cole. The year before his brother Trane died. Both of our cats were like our children. We literally spent thousands on Trane to save him, but nothing worked and a year later Cole had the same affliction. We had a choice. Go the same route we did with Trane or just let his suffering end. We chose the latter. But I still feel him constantly around. A few times I called out to him. He slept my arms every night. The pain of watching him die was horrible and I haven’t let go yet. Loss

 

 

Then a few weeks later my best friend of 78 years Frank Montella, passed away. We grew up together. Our Mother's pushed us in baby carriages as they took their daily walks. We were always there for each other.  Frank served as a Medic in Vietnam. After his service he became a loud voice for the Vets Against The War.  The hole in my heart has not healed and I feel him every day. Loss

 

 

 Pat Martino,  Legendary Jazz Guitarist died three weeks ago.

 Pat and I were friends since 1976. Besides being friends he was an inspiration to me and thousands.  Although I knew it was coming, for he had  been sick for 3 years, his death hit me like a ton of bricks and I constantly feel him around. Loss

 

Anne, Cole, Frank and Pat: I walk with them inside me everyday and I hurt. If it had been months or even a year between their passing I think I would have handled it better, but practically all at once is too much. I find myself welling up with tears and hurting. In fact ( I'm not ashamed to admit) writing this has me in tears.

Realizing the root of my depression I thought it would somehow ease my pain, but it only reminds me why I’m so depressed. As the old adage says:

 

 Time heals all things. Hopefully, in time this will be true.

Dom Minasi

How Do You Say Goodbye?

 

How do you say goodbye to a friend of 78 years? Someone who was more than a friend. So many memories from childhood to adulthood.

As children we were always getting into trouble together. Like the time my mother chased me around the block because Frank and I rode our tricycles up a hill four blocks away from home. When she finally caught me I said : “I want Frank” and she said “ Frank can watch you get a beating”. Or the time when we were teenagers and Frank showed up with a Halloween cake with all kinds of trinkets on it and we proceeded to eat the “whole thing”. Then there was a time in the 90’s when we were roommates for a while and we would argue over the Rolling Stones. He loved them and I hated them.

At one point Frank moved to Los Angeles to follow his dream of being a working actor. Blaise Siwula and I had a gig at the Knitting Factory West and Frank brought all his friends to hear us play and later on he said to me:

“Dom…what the F was that?” When Frank moved back to NY he still showed up at my gigs even though he immensely disliked the music.

 

I was there when he got a divorce and how painful it was for him . I was there through all his girlfriends that never seemed to last. 

 

I couldn’t be there when he died. I knew it was coming . It was 3 weeks ago that they discovered the cancer had spread to his lungs.. I knew he wouldn't be with us much longer. The last time we spoke he could hardly catch his breath.

 

He was put in Hospice Home Care . The visiting nurse started giving him morphine for pain. He went into a kind of a coma. I called his sister Lucy ( who has been an Angel through all this) and I asked her to put the phone by his ear. She handed the phone to June another long time friend of Franks', and I told him how much I loved him and I will see him soon. June told me told me he actually responded to my voice and smiled. 

 

I could feel Frank’s presence all around me and then he died a few hours after I had spoken to him. I can’t describe the pain I felt. Part of me was gone. Later that night I spoke to his sister and she told me she couldn’t believe how many friends he had around the world. I could believe it.

Frank was a person who gave and protected. He never thought twice about helping someone.

After his service in Vietnam as a Medic, he became an EMS worker. There were so many times I would be walking down the street and I would hear a siren and it would be Frank. He would give me lift or the many times I would be on a gig and he would be outside sitting in the ambulance waiting for the next call.

While he was in Los Angeles , struggling to work as an actor he decided to go back to school and became a nurse.

Frank had so many stories to tell and he would tell them with such humor that he had us all in stitches laughing.

Frank made the world a better place for all he came in contact with.

 

Goodbye Old Friend I’ll love you forever. Till we meet again.

.

Dom.

The Pandemic, Cancer and Jazz

 

 

Before the Pandemic came and showed its ugly face in March 2020,

I was pretty comfortable. I would go out of town two or three times  a year for good paying gigs ( NYC doesn’t have good paying gigs for my music and I won’t play for the door). I had 20 reliable students and my wife would pick up some acting or voice over gigs and I'd released one CD per year.

 

That all changed in a few days. My students did not want to be taught on line. All of a sudden I was down to five students. The out -of- town gigs stopped and a quartet recording  ( WIG) that we rehearsed for  three months was cancelled. Fortunately, I had already recorded my guitar quartet ( Eight Hands One Mind) with Hans Tammen. Harvey Valdez and Briggan Krauss. Thanks  to Hans Tammen, the mix was set and the master was handed into Jack DeSalvo and Unseen Rain Records.   

 

 Then December 2020  rolled around I was diagnosed with salivary cancer.

At first they thought I had lung cancer but more tests revealed it was in my right salivary glad right under my right ear. What to do?

Operate of course and take the cancer out.

 

Easier said then done. It seems most of the cancer lodged itself in my nerve, so they couldn’t get it all out. Meanwhile my surgeon , Dr. Peter Costantino, submitted my findings to a Tumor Board for recommendations.  In the interim I had a new oncologist, Dr. William Grace, who said the best way to fight this is with chemo and radiation.

 

Thirty- six precise radiations by Dr. Lederman and six  weeks of Chemo. At one point because of the Radiation, I lost my voice and  couldn’t teach. Fortunately, it all worked  out and I have been in remission for the three months. It took me a while but I was able to pick of five new students.

It did affect my playing. A side effect of chemo is extreme tiredness. My playing lost a lot but slowly I am getting it back.

 

I am not ready to go on the road again even though I have been vaccinated and I still am not accepting students in my home. I still feel it’s too dangerous out there no matter what the government says.

 

 Because of these doctors who saved my life I composed six new pieces to honor them. Each composition has their last name as a title.

 

Hopefully, maybe by the end of the year, I will be able to get back in the studios and record WIG  and the new quartet too.

 

BTW, the tumor board recommended that the surgeon take out the cancerous nerve which would have left my right side of my face paralyzed and I would dribble. Guess what I told him?

 

Dom Minasi

June 20y^th, 2021