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.