Christmas 2011 is nearly here.  The presents are wrapped and stowed away until Santa comes and lays them under the tree on Christmas Eve while the dance of sugar plum fairies commences in the dreams of my daughters.  The tree is up, decorated and lit – each ornament has an origin.  Some received on the advent of one of the kids first Christmas; others as gifts to each one of…

So I sat on this stool, on July 26, 1995 sometime about 9:30 PM, holding this little human-being as he suckled on the nursing bottle. I told him how his mother and I met, how we came to living together, how much I loved her. I made promises to him that only a daddy can promise.  I told him how he came to be, and what happened some nine months or so before his birth.

Nick Delassandro owned a small diner and was huge part of the Ventnor City community. The whole beach community…

There memories of my children that are stored, put to the back of my mind…not forgotten; just simply tuck away like a winter comforter that when the chill of missing or grief comes to clawing its way in like a harsh North wind keeps me warm and snug.  Perhaps one memory isn’t so different.  It’s a memory of seeing my son take on responsibility and earn the trust that was…

There has always been music played in our home and our car.  If we went on road trips, wither it be to visit family or just to explore the roads and byways music was pumping out of the car stereo – FM radio, CD, or tape in the case of our old Camry. 

One song that Tim loved was American Pie by Don McLean.  The song is the story of McLean’s…

In 1996, Gi and I were facing our first Christmas in our home.  We had just moved in a few months before.  As Christmas Day was counting down on our calendar we opted to put our house budget to making sure Tim would have presents to open and not worry about a Christmas tree unless we could find one that was inexpensive.  I wasn’t on the Police Department yet, and I felt inadequate to give Gi and Tim a Christmas tree.  I thought maybe a small ceramic tree would suffice, but Gi wanted a real…

I just arrived home after visiting my son, Tim. Last year, on Thanksgiving 2010, my son and I went on a quest to hunt down a turkey baster for the preparation of the Thanksgiving bird. It started at 10 o’clock in the morning. We headed off in the family car and it was soon into thirty minutes of our sojourn, I realized that I missing Pierre Robert’s traditional playing of…

Christmas, a time of Yule and Noel, a brief moment in childhood believing in a man delivering presents while you’re nestled in your bed; where in retrospect seems like a long history of memories.  As a parent, it was for me to make my son, and later his sisters as well, happy and keep alive an age-old myth.  It is a time of wondering what Who-pudding consists of, or how to…

Every Christmas, multitudes of parents flock to the malls to stand in line waiting to have their children photographed with Santa.  There was no difference with my family when it came to Timmy.  I had graduated from the Police Academy in June, 1998 when Timmy was just shy of his third birthday.  Since Timmy was born friends had told his mother…

The sunlight seemed brighter as I walked out of the Emergency Room.  The nurse walked beside me, partly holding me up, partly holding me back from doing anything stupid.  I pulled out my cell phone and called home.  I knew Gi would be possibly still at the hair salon with the girls – Alaina was graduating Pre-K the next day and we wanted her to have her hair cut and styled.  I crossed the parking lot and sat on the curb.  It was the first time noticing Tim’s blood on my hands, my clothes,…

Halloween was a special holiday for Tim. It was his chance to become his favorite television or comic book superhero, such as the Red Power Ranger or Spider-Man. When he was a baby, it was the costumes that were cute and funny – a puppy-dog, Barney the Purple Dinosaur, or a cowboy. As he got a bit older, the costumes became a little more elaborate – a vampire, the Grim…

It’s called the Rabbit Hole, this sudden loss of a child and the grief that comes along with it.   Much like Lewis Carroll’s Alice chasing after the White Rabbit and plummeting down to the antechambers that open to the madness of Wonderland; each day is met by the disillusion of reality.  There was no bottle with a note attached reading “Drink Me.”  There was no…

Just before Tim’s sixth birthday, it was decided to repaint his room.  Gi had seen ideas on shows such as This Old House and the like and thought of doing an outer space theme.  She searched out swatches of paint to find the perfect night sky shade of blue and with a new sewing machine she made curtains with a planet theme.  For days she scraped, spackled holes,…

In January, 2010, Harold Camping, an eighty-eight year-old self professed Biblical scholar and radio Evangelist announced that the end of the world would occur on May 21, 2011.  By Spring, 2011, billboards were seen on roadways across the United States.  Philadelphia was no exception to the proclamation that the righteous would be taken in whole body and soul into Heaven in…