002 - Grief, Laughter, and Brotherly Bonding - Our Father's Untold Stories with the Gaylord Brothers

Ever wondered how humor can be a lifeline through grief? Join me and my three brothers—Jack, Joe, and Mike—as we share the untold stories of our late father in this second full interview for "Our Dead Dads" podcast. Expect to laugh, cry, and be surprised by some of the revelations as we recount our childhood mischief and the unique quirks that made our dad unforgettable. From his love of "Monty Python's The Meaning of Life" to the oddball traditions that shaped our upbringing, this episode is a heartfelt walk down memory lane.

We don't shy away from the tough stuff. Our father was a complicated man, often emotionally absent and challenging to deal with. Yet, amidst the chaos, we found ways to bond as siblings, supporting each other through thick and thin. Listen as we talk about the impact of his troubling behavior, the bittersweet relief of his passing, and how we navigate the mixed emotions that come with losing a parent. Through these candid conversations, we aim to highlight the resilience that emerged from our shared experiences and the unbreakable bond we formed as brothers.

The journey continues as we touch on everything from our father’s surprising past to the hilarious, gross, and sometimes painful memories that defined our childhood. Whether it’s sneezing into a bowl of cereal or wrestling mishaps that kept Joe from watching SummerSlam, these stories paint a picture of a family that found laughter in adversity. We wrap up with rapid-fire questions, favorite Halloween costumes, and the strange comfort of knowing we're not alone in our grief. Tune in to "Our Dead Dads" for an episode filled with truth, humor, and the healing power of sharing our stories.


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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to Our Dead Dads, the podcast where we normalize talking about grief, trauma, loss and moving forward. I'm your host. My name is Nick Gaylord. I hope you enjoyed the first episode and didn't fall asleep on me more than four or five times as a special treat for getting through my story. Today I'm going to introduce you to my three brothers, jack, joe and Mike. As I've mentioned before, I am the oldest of seven siblings. Jack is my only full sibling. He's 16 months younger than I am, and Joe and Mike are 12 and 14 years younger than me respectively.

Speaker 1: 0:28

Going into this interview, I really didn't know what to expect, and I don't think they did either. This is not only the first full interview that I'm sharing with you, but it's also the very first one that I recorded for this podcast. Like many of the interviews you'll hear on Our Dead Dads, I'm always recording recording, and I decided to start playing this one for you a few minutes before we actually got started with the interview, partially because I'm trying to present an authentic representation of what happens when I'm recording and also because there isn't any time when the four of us are together, when we aren't having a whole lot of fun, and I think that's worth sharing, and now that you've decided to come into the inner circle of my world, there's a lot more that I'm going to share with you, including some family time. We had a lot of fun on this call, and we shared some things with each other about our dad that we hadn't previously shared with each other in the three years since my dad passed, and that was something that we probably should have done sooner, but I'm so happy that we just made the time to have this conversation. It's something that we all badly needed to do.

Speaker 1: 1:19

A quick little disclosure for you this episode and the next episode are going to be long. This one is just over two hours and the next one is closer to two and a half hours. These will very likely be the longest episodes of the show, so I'm asking that you bear with me pause when you need to come back later, because the six guys that you're going to hear over the next two episodes are six of the most important people in the world to me, and it's important for me to share them with you. This also likely won't be the last time you will hear from them, so I hope that you are able to tolerate us. After this episode. They will probably average about 60-90 minutes each, but I also believe that an interview that I conduct will be as long as it needs to be to make sure that we cover the most important points Before we get started.

Speaker 1: 1:58

I'd like to thank everyone for listening, for your feedback and for engaging with the show. Please follow our social media pages on Facebook, instagram and TikTok and, if you haven't already, please get on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen, hit that follow button. And, very important, please give a five-star rating and leave a short review. Tell us what you like, tell us what you're looking forward to, tell us how the podcast has helped you or someone you know, or tell us anything else that you'd like to share. It takes less than a minute and it really does make a huge difference and helps us continue to gain awareness and exposure in the podcast community. If you've already rated and reviewed the podcast, I can't thank you enough.

Speaker 1: 2:32

As you know, my goal is to normalize talking about grief, loss and trauma, which are topics that are not easy for most of us to talk about, but they're also topics that everyone should be discussing more Not only discussing them, but not feeling like they're taboo topics. Time may not heal all wounds, but keeping everything bottled up inside does not heal any of them. Together, we are building a community for others to have a safe space to talk about their stories and feelings, and for anyone who may not yet be ready to talk, just to listen to others and know that no one is alone on this path. That's why I say we are a community and I'm so happy to have you here. Please enjoy this episode and stick around for the end when I will tell you about next week's episode.

Speaker 1: 3:10

Our Dead Dads podcast is sponsored by Kim Gaylord Travel. If you can dream up the vacation whether a getaway for you and your other half, a family trip or a trip for a large group, she will help you plan it. If you've never used or even thought about using a travel agent for your trips, you really should. Kim will help you plan everything the flights, hotels, transportation, excursions, all the places to visit and all the sites to see. You'll get a detailed itinerary of everything and if anything goes wrong during your trip, you have someone to contact.

Speaker 1: 3:36

Whether you're looking for a customized European vacation, a relaxing stay at an all-inclusive resort, an Alaskan adventure, a Caribbean cruise, kim will work with you to make sure you have a seamless travel experience. Contact her today and plan your next trip with a peace of mind that only working with a travel agent can offer. And, as a special bonus for our listeners, mention Our Dead Dads podcast for a 10% discount on planning fees. You can find Kim Gaylord Travel on Facebook, instagram and LinkedIn, or email Kim directly. Her email address is kim at kimgaylordtravelcom. All right, well, hopefully Should we tap okay on our screens, you should Okay.

Speaker 3: 4:30

Why don't you just leave it there and see what happens?

Speaker 1: 4:34

I can do that too. Seem like this is why they should have left you at the orphanage.

Speaker 2: 4:38

I know Exactly.

Speaker 1: 4:40

I'm pretty sure your mom just felt bad for you.

Speaker 2: 4:43

Yeah, after she was expecting a female and he popped out, she said shit.

Speaker 1: 4:47

Well, actually I think she thought that she got what she wanted.

Speaker 2: 4:50

I had the surgery now we know.

Speaker 1: 4:53

All right, let's jump in. First and foremost, thanks everybody for taking the time to join in with us today. I think we're gonna have a lot of fun and really appreciate it. Thank you, you can look a little lively guys, it's okay. Today, I think we're going to have a lot of fun and really appreciate it. Thank you, you can look a little lively guys, it's okay.

Speaker 2: 5:08

Gio is not looking lively. What a bother.

Speaker 1: 5:12

What's up? Pops, Mike's got the pendant. Mike, do you remember the day that Kim and I met you at the funeral home when we flew up for the funeral?

Speaker 2: 5:22

I do.

Speaker 3: 5:24

I do.

Speaker 1: 5:27

There were two parts of that morning that were kind of magical. The first one was uh went up to you, we hugged and I said how you doing? And you said oh, you know, not that great. And I do. You remember what I said to you? I do not. I said what happened? Did your dad die or something? Luckily you, uh, you didn't cry anymore, but you actually enjoyed that. Yeah, that was good. And then, uh, you had the pendants that matthew gave you and you dropped yours on the ground. You said pops, I don't know why you decided to drop him on the ground, but it was pretty funny yeah, he's probably down down low anyway I'm sure he is, I think, something that we may have to upload for the listeners.

Speaker 1: 6:06

I'm pretty sure I have it. If I don't, you can send it to me. That's first selfie that you took. That's first selfie? Yeah, absolutely. Didn't you take a second selfie too?

Speaker 2: 6:14

I did. I got down with the gravestone at the cemetery Right.

Speaker 1: 6:18

The first selfie was with the container of the cremains behind you.

Speaker 2: 6:22

Yeah, he was in the kitchen.

Speaker 1: 6:26

Right. The second one was one of the days that you went and visited him at the cemetery, probably Father's Day or Christmas, something like that, something like that.

Speaker 2: 6:35

He's got a few selfies now and a video. Yeah, I poured out a Coca-Cola on his grave one day from a dead homie, nice.

Speaker 1: 6:42

We are, as Dad frequently referred to us as the respectively the first, second, fifth and sixth in line to the throne of nothing. He was very proud of that. He knew many years ago that he was leaving us a throne of nothing and he made sure that we knew it many times. Joe, what's up? You look like you've got something on your mind no, I'm just.

Speaker 2: 6:59

You guys can't hear this dog, can you? No, I can't hear anything because it's licking its paws right now and it sounds like the guy eating from, I don't know, monty Python. Is that the movie? Where are you from? You know where it sounds when he starts eating. That's what the dog sounds like right now, so I'm just making sure.

Speaker 1: 7:15

You're talking about the meaning of life. Yeah yeah, one of Dad's favorite movies. Who was the fat guy?

Speaker 2: 7:26

Yeah, who? Yeah, who was the fat guy? Yeah, who was the fat guy? Fuck off, I'm full.

Speaker 1: 7:27

That's what the dog sounds like right now, licking his paw. I think those are two words that we never heard dad say in our lives.

Speaker 2: 7:30

I'm full no, he'd just go to your food if he ran out of his yeah, he frequently did that yeah, he would have joe go to your house, go into your fridge just before he stole your mario kart that's not a big. He remember that, which one of you?

Speaker 1: 7:44

stepped on that game. Was it him? Of course it was him.

Speaker 2: 7:48

He got pissed off and probably fucking broke it.

Speaker 1: 7:51

It had to have been him, because what?

Speaker 2: 7:53

was that 93 or 4? I'm 6 and he's 4? 95.

Speaker 1: 7:58

Somewhere around there. 7 and 5. Yeah, there's no way.

Speaker 2: 8:01

I remember him saying we're taking a ride and we would ask where are you?

Speaker 2: 8:08

going and he'd say go for a while, which he always said, yeah, we pull up. We get to your mom's house and he goes go knock on the door and tell Amar'e Ellen that Nick said we can borrow his game. Go knock on the door. Amar'e Ellen. Gives him the game, comes back out. Look at when home start. Gives him the game comes back out. Fucking. Went home and started playing. It Came over a few hours later I think you were probably working. You got out of work, you bought him a new copy, threw it at him fucking, took yours back. Yeah, I don't know why I took mine back. I don't know why you didn't keep the new copy. That didn't make any sense to me.

Speaker 1: 8:38

I definitely regret that. I should have just kept a new one. Wait just kept a new one, Wait.

Speaker 2: 8:43

so you gave us the new copy?

Speaker 1: 8:44

Yeah, Sadly I did. I gave Dad the new copy, I threw it at him, I took my game back.

Speaker 2: 8:51

I remember that I would have not given him the new one.

Speaker 1: 8:54

I was young and stupid. What can I say? Yeah, we were all young and stupid, and now we're old and stupid.

Speaker 2: 9:01

Do you remember it was actually the four of us when you and Johnny were taking us to see Homeward Bound in the movies? The second Homeward Bound.

Speaker 1: 9:10

Dear God, I do not remember that.

Speaker 2: 9:12

So before, oh, you know what I do remember it, you guys wanted to see that movie so badly? So before you guys got to the house, joe and I were eating cereal and I fucking sneezed. You guys got to the house, uh, joe and I were eating cereal and, yes, and um, fucking sneeze, I sneezed right in my cereal milk and cereal went everywhere no, it's just not no. And and dad was that's like that.

Speaker 2: 9:36

He came out of the room and he goes. Uh, he goes. Why aren't you eating? I sneezed at it. He goes. You got to eat it. If you don don't eat it, you're not going to the movies with your brothers.

Speaker 1: 9:45

What a classic individual.

Speaker 2: 9:47

I looked at how to eat it, bro Well you didn't have much of a choice.

Speaker 1: 9:52

You can't blame us. We didn't sneeze in your cereal.

Speaker 2: 9:57

But I got the last laugh because he's not here anymore and I am, that's right, and you are, and you are and you're carrying around evidence of that. Yeah, sorry Dad. Yeah, apologize to Dad. Yeah, I did. I'm sorry.

Speaker 1: 10:12

You know that motherfucker owes me like 20 bucks. You should probably go get it from him.

Speaker 2: 10:17

Every Friday when he was at the nursing home, I would drop him off some sort of food, you know, just so he has some outside food.

Speaker 1: 10:25

Right, he always wanted, wanted something. He always told me yeah, joe's coming by later, joe's gonna drop this off yeah, and I dropped it off on friday and then I got a freaking.

Speaker 2: 10:32

I got woken up no more than 12 hours later saying he died. I bet you didn't even eat the food when I went. So when I went there to pick up his stuff, yeah in his, in his uh box that they gave me, along with his razor, deodorant, a couple other things.

Speaker 3: 10:51

Both of them, I'm sure, untouched.

Speaker 2: 10:54

He had a little poker game, the little handheld poker game he used to play. I remember that and two glazed donuts that the fucking place never threw away they gave you uneaten old glazed donuts.

Speaker 1: 11:04

They fucking place never threw away.

Speaker 2: 11:05

They gave you uneaten old glazed donuts they did, and a plain bagel with cream cheese. Damn, no BLT. I think I got him a BLT that week. Nah, he ate that then died. Oh fuck, okay, oh shit, maybe I killed him then. Eh could be.

Speaker 1: 11:23

That's okay.

Speaker 2: 11:24

He did chokeslam you, so I guess he had it coming right. Yeah, he did.

Speaker 1: 11:28

When did he chokeslam you? That's probably six.

Speaker 2: 11:32

Yeah, we were being little shit, like we always were and he fucking got pissed and he grabbed Jody Fucking chokeslammed him Right on his bed. He was doing something in his room and I was annoying him. I'm mad that he, joke, slammed me on his bed.

Speaker 1: 11:49

My God yeah.

Speaker 2: 11:51

I thought it was fun. I didn't realize he was mad until like years later and you realize that, oh, he's probably mad at me.

Speaker 1: 11:56

I was asking him to go again.

Speaker 2: 11:58

One more time, one more time.

Speaker 1: 12:03

Who was the first one that found out that you two, joe and Mike, were wrestling, and I can't remember which one Speared the other one through the screen door.

Speaker 2: 12:11

No, no, I've never gone through A screen door in my life. I'll put it to you like that yeah, and I never broke my arm either. I broke my own arm. I was just beating your ass. I strategically hit you. Place myself over your arm when you go For the DDT, and I'm sure, yeah, I'm sure.

Speaker 1: 12:27

We won't talk about the things that winked winked, never happened.

Speaker 2: 12:31

Yeah, I forgot. What were we talking about, though, right after the chokeslam the screen door. I think it was that it went from that to the screen door. Oh yeah, because first off he's a little. He might be like overdramatic when he was a kid Because, like you know, the bigger brother usually always wins when you're that age right Michael no, exactly, the bigger brother usually wins, or the older brother, I should say, usually wins, sure.

Speaker 2: 12:56

So like I pushed him and he looked like Shawn Michaels prime Shawn Michaels selling Like he did a backflip through the door and cracked his skull on the cement and snapped his leg in half. He did it all. You gotta play it up, bro. You realize that. I got grounded for who knows how long. I remember one time we got the ice cream truck and I got this stuff you spray in your mouth Like mint. You spray in your mouth.

Speaker 2: 13:23

Oh bro, that shit was horrible. That was the day of SummerSlam 2001. Yeah, I, yeah, I remember. And like it was warhead sour spray, I sprayed him in the eyes and you know I didn't get to watch SummerSlam that year. I'm not going to lie to you, that sucked, that was not fun, definitely was not fun, definitely sucked. Yeah. But like dad woke us up literally the next morning to go to work with him, All three of us Me, him and me, mike and Helene, and it's literally like 4.30 in the morning and they have him and Helene sitting in the living room watching like the first match of SummerSlam and he has me in the kitchen facing the other way. So I can't watch the TV Nice.

Speaker 1: 14:01

Yeah, yeah, could you hear it?

Speaker 2: 14:05

Of course I probably positioned myself, so I got a glare off a window or something so I could watch it.

Speaker 1: 14:12

You guys always did everything you could to try to outsmart Dad. You were usually successful, whether you did it or not?

Speaker 2: 14:19

Yeah, no, we were.

Speaker 2: 14:22

At least he's an idiot. We were wrestling in the playroom and we would wrestle for a few minutes and then, you know, when dad was asleep in the living room, passed out on the couch, and we'd tiptoe through the dining room to peek in the living room see if he was still asleep or not, because usually you snore like a fucking freight train coming through the house and he was. I remember he was asleep and we go back in there, we start fighting and wrestling and I go to sneak around the corner again to look at him, his big ass, standing right there. Yeah, we weren't as quiet as we thought we were.

Speaker 1: 14:55

No, you knew he heard everything yeah, I'm surprised to hear you say that. Yeah, I thought we were smarter than we were. Yeah, but you weren't as dumb as you thought you might have been either yeah, well, that's no, class always have full, that's right I remember him and mom getting into an argument.

Speaker 2: 15:11

Nick was over the house. It was, um, mom, our mother, joe's and i's mom, dad, uh, me and you and mom would like turn around and go in the fridge, or something like that. And, uh, mom would like turn around and go in the fridge, or something like that. And dad would do the oohs to her. And so she turned around. Yeah, so she turned around again. So I did the oohs to her and she caught me. I started going like this, coco beware, she started laughing and then she just goes. You gonna let him talk to me like that, john, he goes, ooh, and they got into a fight because of that laughing. And then she just goes. You gonna let him talk to me like that, john, he goes, and they got to a fight because of it. Well, to be fair, dad knew how to like push buttons.

Speaker 2: 15:54

Yeah, the man did plenty for her to get mad about don't get me yeah, yeah, she was a saint you had to put up a lot of dumb shit yeah yeah, there were a couple things that were like oh, you know what, you're just being a female about it.

Speaker 1: 16:06

Yeah, sounds like exactly something Dad would say. By the way, something I think I should put out there for anybody who's listening to this. Jack and I are the two oldest of the boys. Joe and Mike are the two youngest and different moms. Our mom, Jack and mine, was wife number two. You guys were wife number five hey do you know who wife number one was? I do not, he, I do mentioned you do yeah, yeah oh, okay, I heard a story.

Speaker 2: 16:34

I heard it. I don't even remember her name. If he, I'm gonna use barbara, because I don't remember what it was, it might have been barbara, who knows, but that's the name I'm going to use.

Speaker 2: 16:43

I was in the hospital on a stretcher waiting for my morphine to come because I had kidney stones. If y'all never taken morphine before, whoo, morphine's good stuff, whoo. So this little old nurse, probably about dad's age, comes walking by and she sees my last name and she asks me if I know a John Gaylord. I'm like, of course it's my dad. She said she went to Brooklyn Methodist Hospital with him. So I knew that was who I knew. She knew who our father was.

Speaker 3: 17:13

It was dad, not our brother.

Speaker 1: 17:15

Yeah exactly.

Speaker 2: 17:16

And then she goes is he still married to and I don't know the name, but is he still married to Barbara? And I look at my mom, I'm like who is Barbara? You know like, and I'm probably, I'm 30, I'll be 36 in a month, right, so I'm probably like 20, anywhere between 27 and 30. So so this is like not six or eight years ago but not recent you know, found out dad had a wife in college that he never mentioned.

Speaker 1: 17:46

Crazy a wife in college that he never mentioned. Crazy. Did you guys not know at that point that your mom was his fifth?

Speaker 2: 17:50

wife. No, I had no idea. I thought she was four. I I can't remember. Um, I don't remember. I I don't want to lie. I'm not sure if I knew or not. You know what, now that I think about it, you guys might have mentioned it once or twice before about him. That's why i's why I don't want to say no, but I'm sure along the line I got brought up in conversation somehow, it was never really safe. With this surprise, there's probably three more out there we don't know about. I guarantee you we got another brother or sister somewhere that we don't know about right now.

Speaker 1: 18:19

Well, that was part of why, after he died, I did the 23andMe and I did Ancestry, just to see. And at this point, if we have any brothers or sisters, they are not on the website yet. Well, that ain't never gonna happen, then as of now, we are still of seven.

Speaker 2: 18:40

Well, helene's definitely the youngest then, because after a certain point he wasn't. You know, after he divorced, or our mom divorced him, you know he wasn't enough.

Speaker 1: 18:49

There was no possible way. He, you know he had mentioned to me four or five years before he died. He brought up the conversation of marriage for him and he said to me what would you say if I thought about getting married again? Wow.

Speaker 3: 19:05

I'm willing to bet money that he was serious. Remember he is somebody that it's not necessarily the companionship maybe companionship to him, but at the end of the day, what he needs is someone to take care of him.

Speaker 1: 19:19

Well, that's exactly what he needed.

Speaker 2: 19:21

Yeah, exactly I know who it was. Remember the Queen and Lady oh.

Speaker 1: 19:27

Jesus. Look, there is no denying with our dad. He was a charmer, he was a ladies' man, he somehow got five women to marry him and probably got many more to enjoy other adult time with him that we don't have to get into.

Speaker 2: 19:47

Did I ever tell you the Hampton Bay story? I'm scared to ask what was that? 2004 and 2005 he was there 3 and 4, something like that.

Speaker 1: 19:55

About that. Yeah whenever the blackout happened in.

Speaker 2: 19:57

No, it was 2003,. Right 2003,.

Speaker 1: 19:59

Okay, there you go. The blackout was 2003.

Speaker 2: 20:02

Yeah, so we go to King Colin. It's the summertime and he always wore his Jitney clothes everywhere. It was the khakis with a T-shirt and like the Jitney button-up long sleeve over it, everywhere, like everywhere. Yeah, when he would push the car he would kind of like lean on it, like with his forearms, and kind of push it that way, yeah. And somehow the topic of him being past his prime when it comes to ladies and stuff like that, I don't know how it got brought up, and the cashier that we went to, she was attractive, so he starts talking to her and he's like I said, you just keep him work. He's in jitney clothes. You know, I got grease stains on him and shit like that, whatever it is Goes up to the telly, he's talking and blah, blah, blah and he she gave him his, not her number, wrote her number down, gave it to him. We get out the door, he crumples it up, throws it in the trash, goes. I still got it. Wow, that was it then.

Speaker 2: 20:55

Oh there's maybe he made me get the car from the parking spot, walk to the car. Sounds about right.

Speaker 1: 21:06

That definitely sounds like our pops.

Speaker 3: 21:08

Sounds about right.

Speaker 1: 21:10

Mike and Joe, let me ask you a question. What was it like for you guys growing up with two brothers who were considerably older than you?

Speaker 2: 21:18

You want to go first, joe, or you want me to. I'll go first, it doesn't really matter to me. I thought it was pretty cool. I would always look forward to the weekends when you guys would come over. I loved having two older brothers to be honest with you, especially with the younger one I had in the house. I hated him. You two were always giving me, because we would always do stuff Go outside, we'd go bowling, we'd go to the pub. Fields, there you go. Thank you, fields. I couldn't think of a word.

Speaker 2: 21:45

We would always do stuff we always had the same interest, you know.

Speaker 1: 21:47

Yeah, we had a lot of fun.

Speaker 2: 21:49

Yeah, like we were all. We're all big wrestling fans. That's one thing we got from. Our pops Was pro wrestling and even before we started recording, we were talking about, you know, stuff that happened on Raw and SmackDown Leading up to WrestleMania and whatnot. But yeah, we would always. You know stuff that happened on Raw and SmackDown leading up to WrestleMania and whatnot, but yeah, we would always, you know, or I would always look forward to when you guys would come over over the weekends and we would just do whatever. Plus because, like you know, our father, you know I'm slightly familiar with his work.

Speaker 2: 22:17

He wasn't like when we would go out and have a catch. If I would throw the ball wild twice, it would be over. You know what?

Speaker 1: 22:26

I'm saying and he would make me get the ball too If it went past. You had to go get the ball.

Speaker 2: 22:29

Yeah, and if it happened more than like twice, he'd be like all right, I'm done. He would make excuses why I can't go to Little League, stuff like that. He was never, like very rarely, was he active in sports and stuff like that, but you guys were. We wanted to have a catch. You guys weren't impatient. Let me put it to you like that you guys weren't impatient like he was. So I loved it. Even our older siblings too, that aren't on this poll right now. I would always give us time with your siblings.

Speaker 1: 23:04

It was definitely something that I loved. I mean, I always wished that there could have been more time. I wish that you know, whether it was Little League games or whatever it was, you know, didn't fall during work times. Unfortunately, the time was always limited, but yeah no, I mean.

Speaker 1: 23:20

I always thought it was great having two little brothers because this way, you know, Jack and I hopefully had someone that could kind of teach you guys the ropes. You know, we always tried to help raise you right and just, you know, have someone to look up to us and, you know, be the person or be the people in our cases to set the example for you guys.

Speaker 3: 23:40

One thing that we knew, that Nick and I talked about often, was that you two, mike and Joe, you were stuck there, you were living with him. Now, the benefit to that is, I mean, you had a father growing up, whereas we did not. That being said, we knew because Carl, with our weekend, visits every other weekend for a while.

Speaker 1: 24:04

Yeah, you and I grew up seeing him on weekends.

Speaker 3: 24:05

That's all we ever knew this was not a situation, even though we uh, we didn't look forward to going over there. It wasn't fun for us, uh, he would sit in front of a television or a video game console. Uh, he wouldn't do shit with us. But we knew, and one of the reasons for us going over there and to try to have as good a relationship with you as we did, was that he was not going to give you what you needed. He wasn't going to give you the intention that you needed. He wasn't going to give you the guidance that you needed. He wasn't going to do things with you. So we knew that you guys were going to need that. So we took it upon ourselves to try to have a hand in your upbringing as much as we possibly could, because we knew that, unless it meant that he could do it from his couch, he just wasn't going to do it.

Speaker 1: 24:57

His couch didn't have wheels on it either, so not that early it didn't.

Speaker 2: 25:01

No, no, no, no I absolutely.

Speaker 1: 25:04

I agree with Jack. He's he's dead on it's going over to see him. When he and I were growing up, it was not always enjoyable. We didn't have a choice. Seeing him on weekends was all we ever knew. Um, you know, it wasn't all bad. There certainly were good times. There were plenty of times when he took us to Fire Island, took us to the beach, took us out of the boat, took us to baseball games, playing baseball in the backyard, doing things outside when he was a little bit younger and more active, even at times when he was still in obnoxious pain in the ass and everything was still had to be done to please him. You know I can't say that it was all bad. It wasn't. It was certainly not all good by any stretch.

Speaker 2: 25:52

No, that's a that's the perfect way to put. The relationship with our father Wasn't good, but it wasn't always bad.

Speaker 1: 25:59

No, it definitely wasn't. Um, you know I've said it many times, I've said it on this show that my relationship with him was complicated at best, and part of why I wanted to have this call with each of us, with us as a group and later on I would love to have calls with everybody individually but just to put out there what was it really like for us as individuals and what was it like for the four of us?

Speaker 2: 26:29

it was hard, it definitely was because, like you said, he wasn't around for really much like well, at least for us, like he was around because he was married to our mom until I was I don't know 14 or 15, 11 or 12. But it was like he wasn't there. You know, my mom did everything.

Speaker 1: 26:49

Even when he was there, it was like he wasn't. I mean, I knew that when I was over, when I came over to see you guys, jack, I'm sure you realized that as well. You know, even if he was there, he was largely not present. There. He was largely not present. You know, jack, as you said, he was always occupied either with video games, with tv, with eating. Whatever could occupy him at that moment was his top priority.

Speaker 1: 27:17

And I mean, how many times did he always tell you guys to come outside with us or tell jack and I to take you guys outside, so that he didn't have to? And it wasn't like we didn't want to. We loved everything that we got to do with you guys. I'm so proud to be your older brother and happy that we had you guys growing up. But it is kind of crazy how he was just so largely absent I mean for all four of us was just so largely absent.

Speaker 1: 27:43

I mean for all four of us, but unfortunately for the two of you as well because, at least, as Jack said, you guys had him living with you or you were living with him, so the involvement should have been more, but it just wasn't.

Speaker 3: 27:58

I think it was irresponsible when put in that context. It was incredibly irresponsible. Also, remember this this is somebody who, for his entire life well, until your mom kicked his ass out lived in his parents house. That house had an addition built and he lived there. He lived there with possibly all of his wives. Who knows? His mother would come over into his side of the house and would clean for him, and when we were there on weekends visiting him uh, don't know if you guys knew this, but we would spend time with our grandparents, more so than we ever did with him she would take us into there, we would clean his his stuff, we would make his bed, we would wash his dishes, we would dust. We would do things like that.

Speaker 3: 28:48

He has been used to having things done for him his entire life and that's why he married the way that he did. He married women who were strong-willed. He married responsible women. He turned on the charm. He was oozing charm At his peak. The man was very handsome. He was muscular, very intelligent, well-spoken, charming. That being said, incredibly arrogant, narcissistic, racist, bigot.

Speaker 3: 29:16

My biggest issue with him, aside from all that, even more so than all that was that this is somebody who had so many natural gifts, he could have done so many things and throughout most of his life was a bitter, bitter man. Why? Because life didn't turn out the way that he thought, because he thought he was owed something, because things just didn't turn out and he couldn't help but living in the past, in a past that wasn't. He lived in a past that never happened. He was a very bitter person and I want to elaborate on something that you said there were good memories, there were good times.

Speaker 3: 30:02

The problem is that there are few and far between. But because there are so few and far between and this person is gone and we were dying and we we would have done anything for a better relationship with him, I think it's safe to say that all of us hold on to those good memories very, you know, fiercely, because there's so few of them and you know it's only a matter of time between old age and we become decrepit or what have you, that our memories fail and they fade. But for me it's about the little things, you know, those small memories, those little things that I think that, wow, this is indicative of the person that he could have been and probably should have been, but largely wasn't.

Speaker 1: 30:46

Well said, I agree, mike you haven't chimed in in a minute. What? What would you like to add to that?

Speaker 2: 30:51

No, he pretty much hit the nail on the head.

Speaker 3: 30:54

there he was a douchebag until he wasn't and then, once those five seconds were up, he went back to being a douchebag. Yeah, you if he went back to being a douchebag.

Speaker 2: 31:04

Yeah, johnny pretty much said it. I never tried to let the basketball games or baseball games or weddings or birthdays or whatever. I never tried to let that bother me that much, because I still had a good time. I still enjoyed it. I still had fun with my brothers, I still had fun with my family. I still had fun with whoever was there Friends, whatever it was. I still enjoyed myself. I always looked at it.

Speaker 2: 31:25

He was missing out. He wants to make an excuse or whatever. That's fine, he's the one missing out. Those will stand out in our memories as good times.

Speaker 2: 31:31

My mom was at every single basketball game. She would bring her work to the game and sit in the bleachers and do it. There was plenty of times when he was. She should have took me to a game practice I'm sorry and he would punish me on some bullshit, just so he'd have to take me. And then mom would come home and they would argue about it and then we'd go to the next practice and she would talk to the coach and be like this is you know, this is how it goes, you know. And then he remember him telling me and telling her if you need a ride, if that's what's happening. You need a ride. You call me and I'll, you know, pick you up and stuff like that.

Speaker 2: 32:00

It absolutely by any any stretch of whatever. It was not always bad. Unfortunately, there was more bad than good. Um, and like johnny said, you hang on to the good ones more. You know, when we were kids you guys being older than us I would love christmas. I always have. I love christmas. I love you, know everything about it and you guys come over mostly on like christmas eve and whatever do presents and nick would. Nick would play Santa, he would dress up in Santa Claus.

Speaker 1: 32:27

I don't know what the hell you're talking about.

Speaker 2: 32:29

Sorry. Yeah, somebody who resembled that was Santa Claus. Yeah, somebody who resembled no one year it wasn't, oh yeah. So he had his I don't know. I'd say for the first four or five years we believed we were kids and stuff like that.

Speaker 1: 32:47

And then this numbnut walks in with a Santa suit on and his Nike's on, they get a new balance.

Speaker 2: 32:50

They get a new balance. And then I go out in the kitchen 20 minutes later and him and dad are in the kitchen eating Oreos at fucking 1.30 in the morning. So he ruined it for me.

Speaker 1: 32:58

But that's not. That's one of the good things he did do. I stopped by to give him a video game back. I wasn't there for him.

Speaker 2: 33:07

Yeah, and that's where I was going with that. Things like that, don't get me wrong. My mother to this day decorating presents, gifts. She gets 98% credit for all that stuff. But the 2% that he would do for me is the trains. He was huge into Lyle and trains. I love those things. For me, it was the trains. He was huge into Lyle and trains. I loved those things. I just took a liking to them.

Speaker 2: 33:29

That the Santa Claus I tend to hang on to. I forgot who said it. One of them said wrestling. I think, joe, we all bonded over wrestling. For me, my favorite was always the Undertaker. When he would die, you would have him put the figure on the shelf, don't touch him until he comes back, and blah, blah, blah you gotta believe, and all this kind of stuff. He'll be back and then you can play with him. Stupid little things like that. That's what I choose to remember. I try to block out the fights and the throwing the dishes and the slamming the table and making a bullshit excuse not to take me to a practice or a game or a dentist or something like that.

Speaker 3: 34:07

Or torn your ACL.

Speaker 2: 34:10

Oh, that was a great one. Fucking that was incredible. Tore my knee apart in karate.

Speaker 1: 34:15

You were in the last fight of the tournament.

Speaker 2: 34:16

Right, that's what it was.

Speaker 1: 34:18

Yeah, I was in the last fight of the tournament.

Speaker 2: 34:21

Yeah, chuck Norris had his son in that class, his grandson in that class, and I was going uh, chuck Norris had his son in that class, his grandson in that class. Now I was going against him yeah, it was little Norris against little gay and the little Norris got scared so he put his oil on the mat I never saw it and, just you know, slipped and tore it. But I remember when it happened it hurt like another chucker. I couldn't straighten it and I couldn't put any pressure on it. It was swollen. I just know with that, I just know how the story ends.

Speaker 2: 34:45

I'm sorry, yeah, and like my whole knee, instead of being the middle, was shifted to the right a little bit. I got my shoes on and I called him come pick me up and he was pissed because you know, I got a ride there with two other people and he didn't help me in the fucking car, he didn't help me all kind of shit. And I remember saying I, I think I have to go to the hospital. He goes you're fine, you just bruise something. I'm like, okay, I get downstairs. And I couldn't take it. I couldn't straighten my knee. It was horrible. It was swollen. The pain was horrible. I said Dad, I have to go to the hospital, he goes, call your mother. I called Mom. I called Mom up. She came, took me, did whatever. Go back the next day for MRI to find out everything was torn up.

Speaker 1: 35:26

That's right, I forgot. So you were 16 at this point, so they were already divorced and you were living with him.

Speaker 2: 35:33

It was the same day that Bobby Lashley jumped through the cage onto Umaga. I got home, got home from the hospital, I put on the TV and it was ECW. I got home from the hospital, I put on the TV and it was ECW. And I just caught when he started running to the ropes in one cage and then jumped into the cage and the whole panel fell on top of Umaga. So whatever day that was, it was like a day or two before my birthday, my 17th birthday. You couldn't pass.

Speaker 1: 35:56

Math 001 in community college but you can remember what match was on wrestling the day before. I have autism wrestling I have autism.

Speaker 2: 36:06

I have autism. I told everybody, I remember shit you absolutely do not have autism. I am one special mother chucker. I remember weird shit. I remember sneezing in the cereal. It's just.

Speaker 1: 36:20

I remember weird stuff in certain ways you did a lot of crazy things when you were six years old? Yeah, I did.

Speaker 2: 36:29

There, you go. Let's get it out there Before you tell the story. This is our father in a nutshell, right here. Okay, I don't remember if Johnny was there. I think he was in college, I believe.

Speaker 1: 36:41

I'm pretty sure he wasn't there.

Speaker 2: 36:44

Yeah, I was six years old and it was a rainy, cloudy, crappy day. And I was eight, I was six.

Speaker 1: 36:51

And Joe and I were wrestling. I think I was about 20.

Speaker 2: 36:54

Joe and I were wrestling and you know being a little shipped, and my father had enough and we each had corners we had to go to. So Joe went to his corner to go to. So Joe went to his corner, I went to my corner. We got out for lunch. We were done with lunch right back in the corner, and I remember walking out of my corner to the living room where Nick and Dad were and I told them I had to go to the bathroom. Yeah, you didn't even have a corner, you had. I was in the hutch.

Speaker 3: 37:20

I had to stand against the hutch there was a hutch against the wall.

Speaker 2: 37:26

It in the hutch. I had to stand against the hutch. There was a hutch against the wall.

Speaker 1: 37:26

It wasn't even really a corner, though it was right next to the glass door, so you were still able to look out into the backyard.

Speaker 2: 37:30

Yes, but back then anyway, the way the living room was, there was two not reclining chairs but lounge chairs, kind of in the farther end of the living room, and I walked into the living room. And I walked into the living room and I remember Nick sitting in one of the chairs and he turns and he starts laughing and I had this big piss stain on my short pants. Whoa, whoa, whoa. You got to back it up sir.

Speaker 3: 37:59

You got to back it up a little bit.

Speaker 1: 38:02

That was the second time you went into that room.

Speaker 2: 38:07

You told him you had to go to the bathroom.

Speaker 2: 38:10

And you told me he goes, go in your pants. Yes, yeah, you told him you had to use the restroom and he said go in your pants, get back to your corner. So I went back to the corner, I pissed myself. Then I walked into the living room. But as I walk into the living room, but as I walk into the living room, nick is looking at me and he just starts smiling and laughing. And I turn the other way and I walked in. I said, dad, I wet my pants. I wet my pants myself, I peed myself. And he just looked at me. He's six.

Speaker 2: 38:40

Six years old.

Speaker 1: 38:42

He threw the Nintendo controller down.

Speaker 2: 38:44

He did. He was actually playing Nintendo. I remember him looking at Nick and saying something along the lines of you've got to be fucking kidding me, or something like that. So he took me, he put me in my sister's room and he took one of her diapers and then put a diaper on me. He took one of her diapers and put a diaper on me, then went right back into the corner. We stood there for I don't know how long that was it. The man had a diaper on until mom got home.

Speaker 2: 39:20

Six years old I was eight at the time I would have just went to the bathroom. That's what I would have done. Though that's just me, man you got to Can't say I didn't listen.

Speaker 1: 39:32

No, you did exactly what he told you to do.

Speaker 2: 39:35

Yep, but I just remember the look on his face. And then he looked over at Nick and he got pissed and he threw the Super Nintendo controller and he just fucking took me and said let's go to your sister's room and lay me on the bed and put a fucking diaper on me.

Speaker 1: 39:48

Isn't that the ironic part? You got in trouble for doing exactly what he told you to do.

Speaker 2: 39:53

Yeah, he didn't even wash you, you fucking sick bastard. I don't remember. I'm sure if he put me in his arm, I'm sure he used baby wipes on me or some shit. I honestly don't remember if there were baby wipes present for that, I'm sure you got a bath that night anyway.

Speaker 2: 40:16

Yeah, I mean there was another time we had six out of the seven kids were at the house and it was later at night. It was a Sunday. We got this. You know those racetracks with the two cars and you had the little controller, and it was later at night. It was a sunday. We got this. You know those racetracks with two cars and had a little control and it would fly around. We were eating there and nick and the older of the siblings were in the living room with dad doing whatever and I was you know joe and irene dinner and uh, I ate all the dinner.

Speaker 2: 40:39

Uh, one of the siblings came in and said you know he's all done and as the sibling went to take the plate out from me, I puked it all up right on the kitchen table. I puked it up on the table, I puked it up on my pajamas and he didn't even get up, he just made the other sibling. Just they took me in there and took me in the bathroom and cleaned me up. I was maybe four or five at that and yeah.

Speaker 1: 41:07

I don't remember that, pretty similar to how you've always claimed that I pile drove you on first base and I don't remember that.

Speaker 2: 41:15

Alright, bro, you're bashing murder ass. Took me on first base, okay, and you pile, drove me.

Speaker 1: 41:21

Thank you, you do remember this.

Speaker 2: 41:26

You picked me up, you were an abuser. You picked me up. Alright, I was an abuser. You picked me up, you all right, all right I was an abuser we were, I can't remember it, we were always.

Speaker 2: 41:37

They took us to the field, elementary school, the field that was sitting there. You know they always let us go first. You know everything like that. And then I hit it and I started running the first base and nick like just took me up and grabbed me and picked me upside down and fucking piled, drove me right on first base. And Nick just took me up and grabbed me and picked me upside down and fucking piledropped me right on first base. But there was no base there, it was just a little metal sub that the base slides onto and I remember that like it was yesterday and for 30 years he denied it. But now I have a witness to do that. And yeah, you're a scumbag, you have to beat up little kids.

Speaker 1: 42:09

Well, you're a scumbag.

Speaker 2: 42:11

You're like the beat up little kids? Well, you're welcome. So here's the thing.

Speaker 1: 42:13

Here's the thing. I'm not denying it, I'm saying I do not remember it happening.

Speaker 2: 42:18

So you have something that our father referred to as selective amnesia.

Speaker 3: 42:22

Yay, yay.

Speaker 1: 42:28

Would that be one of the good or the bad qualities that I got from him?

Speaker 2: 42:32

I don't know, what did you get from him? You got your giant skull. 53., 58. What does he wear? Oh, that was the best thing ever, bro.

Speaker 1: 42:44

My hat size is 8.

Speaker 2: 42:46

When we went to Texas and I was trying to find a cowboy hat.

Speaker 1: 42:49

It was near impossible.

Speaker 2: 42:51

For the viewers at home. You guys can tell from the camera angle. Nick's head is one of the biggest things I've ever seen in my entire life. We just buried our father. We literally just came from the cemetery where he got buried Yep.

Speaker 2: 43:10

We went to Seacoast. It's a restaurant in St Richard's, Very good, very good place, and you know the long table, everybody's sitting around. I don't know how we got talking about head sizes and naturally Nick came up and I go to Nick and I was just like, hey, nick, what hat size are you? He fucking goes, he had something in his other hand. Yeah, he couldn't do the gesture, yeah, so he went. I'm in three, I'm like 53?.

Speaker 2: 43:37

And you know, I mean it would make sense if you saw the guy you know. I mean, you know it's a lot of fabric to cover that head.

Speaker 1: 43:46

Fortunately there is no size 53, but yes, it is. Unfortunately it is a size 8. Uh, yeah, that was one of my joys of uh childhood being the fat kid, having the last name of gay lord, having the nickname of mr potato head, you know, one of the most popular toys in the early 80s. That was a lot of fun.

Speaker 2: 44:06

Oh, thank god I didn't. I didn't get to miss the potato head. But I got the fat gay lord part, I got to find that I know what video it was. It was the videotape name labeled Picnic Bobby and Picnic, somewhere in a campsite or something like that, and Nick was there, john was there, joe, one of our sisters, wasn't alive yet Nick's wearing these, basically Daisy Duke acid wash. They're like Daisy Duke acid wash jean shorts and this shirt. I wear short shorts nowadays, but I got nice legs baby.

Speaker 1: 44:46

Yeah, but you're a sexy bitch.

Speaker 2: 44:48

Exactly, and he had this fluorescent pink t-shirt on and he had these Coke bottle sized glasses. I mean, he was a walking punchline, basically. So I think what I'm going to do is I'm going to find that video, I'm going to find that closet and send it to you. Maybe it can be the poster for this podcast.

Speaker 1: 45:08

I can't wait to see that it was pretty embarrassing.

Speaker 2: 45:12

I have an image in my head.

Speaker 1: 45:13

Fashion wasn't exactly one of my high points as a child.

Speaker 2: 45:17

Also I mean back in the late 80s, early 90s. That was the style that's what it was then. It wasn't just like yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 45:24

I mean the image of Daisy Duke shorts. That just does not make any sense.

Speaker 2: 45:27

I mean, bro, they were, they were pretty short man. I mean like, okay, say your hat. Okay, say your hat's a size eight, right, size eight hat, correct. That was like you trying to put on a pair of shorts that's a size four. That's what it looked like. Okay, it wasn't flattering, okay, and you got these big ass glasses on and and you know, but hey, listen, I look like an idiot. I was a 40 pound short, fat, 13 year old with a kobe bryan chain and the basketball charm on there.

Speaker 1: 45:55

You know I'm no better. The big ass gold chain, the lakers jersey and there was a point.

Speaker 2: 46:01

I had this, this outbreak, this fucking rash around my lips, and I put gasoline over it. Joe called it greasy elephant shit. You know I'm no one to talk, so it was horrible.

Speaker 1: 46:12

Best parts of childhood.

Speaker 2: 46:14

I mean, joe was actually a pretty normal looking kid. Actually he didn't look too stupid. A little rotund. No, that was when Dad started working at Jitney, because he would bring home all the Danish's and the muffins and stuff like that. Oh, yeah, yeah, they can't fire him now. They already did that and he's dead. So I mean, he took danishes, he took muffins, he took, uh, everything, everything it wasn't nailed down. Yeah, apparently he boomed people in the parking lot like imagine so now walking through the parking lot.

Speaker 2: 46:43

But no, that was. That was at the house. I heard it was at work too. I watched this man. He key somebody's brand new car because they were parked where they shouldn't have been parked at the Jitney In the back parking lot, they parked in a bus parking spot. It looked like a brand new car and he just went up and down with his key like five times. One of his friends from work was going through a divorce. He actually married the same woman twice and divorced both times.

Speaker 1: 47:11

Oh.

Speaker 2: 47:11

Mr Ed Shout out.

Speaker 1: 47:12

Mr Ed Mr.

Speaker 2: 47:13

Ed bro. Yeah, man, he was a really cool guy. He stayed. You know, they had the basement done up so he had a room down there. One day his ex-wife came to the house the basement wasn't done up, no, the room was, but yeah it. It was an unfinished basement but there was a room down there where he slept. It's finished. Now His wife comes to the house and me and Mr Ed and Dad were on the porch sitting there and the lady comes plying up parks on the grass and just like yelling and screaming and blah, blah, blah and cursing and Dad was actually pretty polite in the beginning.

Speaker 2: 47:49

He goes hey, listen, I have kids here and you can't be acting like that. This is my home. Blah, blah, blah, yada, yada. She blew him off and then dad went off. You dumped me, get the hell off my property, you mother, all this kind of stuff. She told him to kiss her ass and he goes oh yeah, kiss your ass, kiss my ass, turns around, pulls his pants down and he's mooting her on the deck right to the house. I don't know where I was for that, but I remember that it was funny.

Speaker 1: 48:17

I would like to hear from each of you your thoughts, your feelings regarding the morning that we all talked when I called you up and told you that he died, through the funeral afterwards. This is something that the four of us haven't really talked about a lot to each other, so I'm curious as to what your thoughts were, how you dealt with it, how you got past it or, even if you haven't, what thoughts are still there. Joe, why don't you go first? We haven't heard from you in a while I was relieved, that's gonna make sense.

Speaker 2: 48:45

I was relieved how were you relieved the man didn't do very much to take care of himself at all. So he's in pain a lot. So that was part of it, but I took care of most. I took care of him for the most part Back and forth to doctor's appointments, stuff like that. If he needed to go to the hospital I was usually the one to take him.

Speaker 2: 49:05

I'd like to think I have patience, let me just put it like that. Like I'm a patient man. That motherfucker just drove every single one less one of my patients out the window. So like when I got that call, like Mike walked into my room at 7.30 in the morning he goes wake up. I looked over, I saw him at 7.30. He goes wake up. Dad died. And like I had my eyes closed because because like I just woken up and the lights were on and I couldn't see, so I kept them closed. But like I was just thinking I don't want to say about time because that's not the way I was feeling but like I said, I was just relieved that he wasn't in pain anymore. I was relieved that he couldn't annoy me anymore, if that makes sense.

Speaker 2: 49:41

I mean, the three of you know, and nobody listening knows, obviously, but three of you know he was a pain in the like. It's it was his way or no way. You know what I'm saying. Like he wasn't a very compromising man. He didn't compromise really at all. He didn't do things the way he liked it. There was an issue, even when he couldn't do anything about it in his later years. There was really nothing he could do, so like he would just be a mean and nasty old prick about it.

Speaker 2: 50:05

This was prime Trump too. This was prime trump too. This is prime trump being trump and everything like that. So he died in may of 21. Leading up to that, obviously, you know the president is the president and even like through the pandemic and covet, I like he was just like just stuff I don't want. Like I'd rather just talk about the yankees and pro wrestling, which are the two things he got me into were yankee baseball, but the yankees and pro wrestling, let me just right, can we just talk about that and have a civil conversation and he like just find a way to bring just negative shit up. It's like I don't want to talk about this and we get into arguments. He was in so much pain from his hip.

Speaker 1: 50:44

He asked me about medical marijuana oh wow, I didn't know he ever did that he did did it once.

Speaker 2: 50:50

He didn't even smoke it, it was an edible, it was a chocolate bar. It was like a square chocolate bar with four individual. Like you break it up into four quarters. Sure, I'm like, eat a quarter of this, because he's going to zombify himself. What do you think he did? He ate the entire thing, the entire fucking thing. He was like a zombie. He thing, the entire fucking thing. He was like a zombie.

Speaker 2: 51:13

He would cough a lot because he had emphysema. But the way he would cough when he was, it was just like I thought he was dying, like I thought he was choking. So I'm like I'm calling the fucking ambulance. He was worried about he's getting arrested because he was high. So that's when I knew he was okay, because I'm sitting there for hours just and just watching him and he's called whatever. And it got to the point where I was nervous for him. He didn't snap out of it.

Speaker 2: 51:34

But you know how he plays stuff. Whatever it is, he'll play it up. Sure, that's what he was doing. So he played it up and like I was like I'm calling the ambulance, and that's when he kind of like came out of his zombie status and some more. I'm just out of it. Don't know he was, he was stoned. He was stoned but just like little things like that, like he would never listen, like I'd take him to the doctors and we'd have to travel on sunrise and I go, I get on sunrise highway at exit 57 and I get off sunrise highway at exit 55. We went two exits, a seven minute ride and like sunrise highway wasn't the the smoothest, I guess you would say there was a bunch of bumps or whatnot he was complaining about every single bump yeah, I would be getting the right lane going, because if you went a fraction over 55, which was a speed limit, it's an issue.

Speaker 2: 52:26

It's an issue, oh I know, meanwhile I'm like going 55 in the right hand lane, because I've only got to go two exits right and he's telling me to slow down. I can't drive with you anymore. It's like I I just don't know like he would make me anxious, the way he would react to certain things, and like it would be like the worst thing in the world and it, yeah it just relief is a good way to put it I mean don't get me wrong.

Speaker 2: 52:50

I was sad like my father just died. You know I don't want to make sound like I'm cynical I completely understand.

Speaker 1: 52:56

Yeah, yeah, look, I'm gonna. I'll elaborate on my own feelings a little bit later and very similar to what you've expressed. Um, so once he was gone, got some time to process it weeks, months. What feelings have come up since then, if any?

Speaker 2: 53:16

none like I still feel the same way and, like I said I it's not because I'm an asshole or I'm cynical or I'm just I'm always gonna miss my dad. Don't get me wrong, I'm always gonna miss my dad, but he just he did a lot for me. I don't know, I don't want to say it because I don't know how to put it and make it not sound bad.

Speaker 1: 53:37

Put it exactly how you need to put it. There's no wrong answer here.

Speaker 2: 53:41

Yeah, I was just relieved, like I still think about, like, like what Mike was saying and Jack was saying earlier, like the little things you know, you, you remember, which that's what I hang on to. I don't hang on to the fact that when he was divorcing my mom I think it was already established michael was going to live with him, pauline was living with mom and I was like I wasn't going anywhere, I was always going to live with mom. So at first I think he realized that I was going to go live with my mom and he treated me like shit, like yeah, and like never abusive or anything, like the physically, I should say abusive or anything like that I remember one time me Mike I don't know if Helene was there or not.

Speaker 2: 54:17

Who was our youngest? Who is number seven out of seven? Right, helene, seven, yes.

Speaker 2: 54:21

Yes, so we know, yeah, exactly Our friend Anthony Gumbs, who was his friend, his father was friends with our dad, like I think they even planned to move in together after you know, like he divorced, or my mom divorced him, but unfortunately Mr Gumbs passed away before that could happen. But we're all. Do you remember that slab of concrete? Like you walk out the back deck down the stairs and the slab of concrete was there and the boat would sit there? Yes, so we had a bunch of like the boat was gone, the slab of concrete was still there and there was a bunch of firewood there.

Speaker 2: 54:58

I don't know if we were moving it or what the hell we were doing, but he made me move every single piece of firewood because he didn't think I wanted to live with him or not. So that's basically who our dad was in a nutshell. So, like, I don't hang on to that at all. I try to hang on to the little things. Uh, yeah, I'm kind of relieved that I don't have to deal with any of the bullshit anymore. So that's where I'm at. Like I still, I'll still visit him on his birthday, on father's day, not necessarily on christmas day, but I'll make it a point to get there during that month of December. Yeah, so it's not like I don't, I like completely, you know, cut them out. But yeah, I'm just one less thing to stress about, I guess. Right, that's right.

Speaker 1: 55:41

Thanks for sharing that. I appreciate it. You're welcome. You know, unfortunately, I do remember a lot of the verbal mistreatment that you received as he and your mom were getting divorced. It was incredibly unfortunate.

Speaker 1: 55:56

He and I had a lot of fights about it. Once he was in the apartment he would tell me Joe this and Joe that, and Joe wouldn't support me and Joe didn't believe in me or whatever. And I'm like dad, you treated him like such garbage after divorce. Why? Why should he and he? The problem with him is he always. That's that was the question that never got answered, like when I said why should he, you know, treat you any differently? Why shouldn't he, you know? Why should he not be upset with you? Like he was always thinking that everything jack said it before everything had to be about him. The fact that you spoke against him the slightest little bit, or that any of us did. That was just what he always had a problem with. And you know I mean you were 15 years old there was nothing that you did wrong. There was nothing that anybody did wrong except for him, but he just refused to ever see it that way. Yeah, he never did anything wrong.

Speaker 1: 56:50

No, not in his eyes. And unfortunately, that is largely due to how he was raised and unfortunately, his mother raised him to believe that the world was going to bow before him and he thought that everybody was there to please him. He thought that everybody was there to do everything for him. He thought that he walked on water. He always thought it. He thought it through all five of his marriages and eventually, especially after the last one was over, when he was in the apartment by himself I'm pretty sure that's when he realized he didn't.

Speaker 2: 57:24

You'd hope that he realized you know?

Speaker 1: 57:26

Yeah, I hope so. Yeah, who knows?

Speaker 3: 57:29

Jack, what about you? Rail? You know? Yeah, I hope so. Yeah, who knows jack? What about you? Now? Most of I remember quite well, but the beginning part. I believe that my wife woke me up because I believe you had tried texting me, but I didn't answer. Why.

Speaker 1: 57:42

Well, maybe because it was because it was 6 30 on a Saturday morning.

Speaker 3: 57:47

Right. So I think you texted her and she probably said something in her wonderful soothing voice, something like hey, dick, wake up. So the same wife.

Speaker 2: 58:01

That's six months pregnant, right, I'm sorry say again. The same wife that's six months pregnant with your daughter, right?

Speaker 3: 58:09

Yeah, love her, absolutely love her. She's the best, she's the best. Anyway, she told me that Nick was trying to get a hold of her. So I looked at my phone, saw Nick had tried reaching out whether it be text me, call me. What happened? So I called him and I had a feeling I knew what it was. So I said something to the effect of what's going on was so. I said something to the effect of what's going on is our father dead. And then, uh, after about a second or two, you said yes, like okay, and actually I have to interrupt you for a second.

Speaker 1: 58:39

You didn't say okay, you did say you said is dad dead? And I said yes, and you said what? And I said yes, and again you said what? And said he's dead.

Speaker 3: 58:52

You're right Now. Come back to me. We talked about getting Michael and Joseph on call, on doing the four-way call. Once all of us were on and we were all talking about it, I made the decision all right, I'm going down to Long Island because I knew I was going to be there with our brothers and our sister. That was the most important thing for me to be there with them, to support them in whatever way possible. I also, in my mind, it was important for me to try to keep them on track because this thing was going to be moving quickly.

Speaker 3: 59:24

Things were going to need to happen, whether it be things that we just couldn't imagine at that point, but basically, whether it be decisions that would have to be made, things that would need to happen. As far as us preparing for certain things, things were now set in motion that we hadn't been expecting this to happen, but now we have to go with it. On the call, I said all right, I'm coming down. Our sister Helene, child seven of seven, was at the house. All of us were there at the house, had a phone call with Nick, basically put it out there. Okay, this is going to be a tough several days we're going to be going through a lot of feelings, a lot of emotions. That being said, the important thing is that we're here together, we're all in this together and we're going to go through this together as a family. The funeral was what it was.

Speaker 1: 1:00:11

One of the best things this person ever did was pay for his own funeral yeah, shout out my dad uh, but I'm gonna take a little bit of credit for that, because when he had the money before kim and I moved to texas, I basically made him go to the funeral home, and it was initially against his will, but he fought and he argued and I said, listen, there are seven of us and there's not going to be 100 percent agreement on what to do for your funeral, so you're going to make all the decisions so that we don't have to. And yeah, I agree, it is one of the best things that we ever did was to get him to do that go ahead, I was just gonna say our dad, without going into details, our dad wasn't always broke.

Speaker 2: 1:00:59

At one point he had a couple of bucks, you know what I'm saying. So like he paid for his funeral, or after he got divorced and he was living by himself after mike moved down, whatever, I feel like he was more willing, I guess, at least with me. This is just my experience, I don't know about y'all, but more willing to help if that makes sense, like if I needed a spare 50 or 100 bucks, like it was. Like no problem, you know, here it is.

Speaker 2: 1:01:22

But some things happen that we won't go into detail about. And yeah, he died. I think we each got about 300 bucks each and that was because he got one last Social Security check.

Speaker 1: 1:01:34

Right, yeah, which ended up having to be split seven ways because that was what the law required. Yeah, other than that, there was nothing. We were heirs to the throne of nothing.

Speaker 2: 1:01:46

Yeah, no, he was right when he said that.

Speaker 1: 1:01:48

Yeah, jack, back to you um, yeah, no, you're right well, just to follow up with that real quick.

Speaker 3: 1:01:56

Uh, I lose patience with people. I'm not saying I'm not anybody here, but when people who legitimately about that they're not receiving anything from a loved one when their loved one passes away. Yeah, whatever belongs to somebody belongs to them. If they are fortunate to have something to pass on, it's theirs to do with that, however they choose. If a person is unfortunate in that regard and doesn't have anything and they passed away almost destitute, get over yourself, because even if they did, it's not yours, it's theirs.

Speaker 3: 1:02:37

But yes, when he died he had next to nothing. Unfortunately, you could say that's almost mirrored his life. He was a man who went through five marriages, five divorces, seven kids that we know of and found a way to pretty much burn every bridge, fracture every relationship and piss everything away Everything. But the funeral was what it was. I remember when I was told that he was also going to have the bagpipes played at Maze of Grace and I said you, son of a bitch, this was just because he was always like the ending of Star Trek 2. Pardon my language, but I just said you, motherfucker, just thinking, are you kidding me? Spock deserved that. He died a selfless death. What did he do to deserve it? Nothing, he paid $100 for it, he did. Yeah, he died a selfless death. What did he do to deserve it? Nothing, he paid $100 for it, he did. Yeah, he's fine. And there's one other thing I want to say real quick Is that he had kids who turned out to be successful in spite of him Not because of him, but in spite of him.

Speaker 3: 1:03:47

Now, all of us are on the same page, that we all have our horror stories, but yet I think it's a testament to not just us, but to others, whether it be others that knew him, others that were married to him, other kids that all have their reasons to harbor ill feeling and some of us do, I know I do at times, probably more often than is healthy, but we try to hold on to the good things, but yet it's just look what came out from this person. He married quality women and he had quality children, and all this is in spite of him. We are where we are, for the most part not because of him, are where we are for the most part not because of him. As far as, uh, thinking of him, I try not to think about him as much as possible, because I find myself getting upset and frustrated more so than not. I try really hard to think about the good things. I think about what am I so?

Speaker 3: 1:04:44

Some of my passions in life? Movies. Growing up, you know, I was a I was a video store rat. If I had a few bucks in my pocket, I'd go to the video store which were a thing back in the 80s and I would rent a movie. This was something that he and I would just watch movies and we would talk about them.

Speaker 3: 1:05:07

Cooking. I remember because his father was a chef our grandfather Little lessons that was taught on to him. He would pass on to us, such as the importance of keeping an iron skillet seasoned and how to season it, the importance of all you'll ever need, the basic seasonings of salt and pepper, little things like that, things that are to this day. That are passions in my life that I can still connect to him. So I really try to hang on to those little things.

Speaker 3: 1:05:36

When I sway, I sway hard because I think back to this person who was born with so many physical gifts, who was born with a keen intellect, who was charming, who was handsome, and he pissed it all away and it's so unfortunate, and I think that's one of the reasons why I hold myself to such a high standard. That's one of the reasons why that I hold guilt for things that I shouldn't be holding myself guilty for for the last several years. I don't want to become like that. You see where he went. I don't want to become like that. You see where he went and I do my best to not go down that road. Look, at the end of the day. It's difficult.

Speaker 3: 1:06:16

All of us were hoping and trying for a better relationship with him. As we were all growing up and getting older, we were all doing our best to try to get to a sway favor with him, trying to get his attention. Hell, with us. He would play one against the other. He would have his favorites depending on what year it was, what time of the day it was. He did that and whatever his reasoning was who knows. So it's a mixed bag for me. I'm glad he's not here, because he's not paying anymore and he's somebody that we all would say jokingly to each other, with a touch of seriousness, that he's going to outlive us all. Uh, because with every bit of pain and everything that he was going through. Uh, you just thought that you know he's. He's a human twinkie or a cockroach, that he's just going to survive anything and everything. I really try hard if he uh creeps into my brain. I try hard to keep in mind, uh, the things that um, like wrestling.

Speaker 3: 1:07:10

Wrestling has come up many times. The reason why we bring wrestling up so often is because this is the one commonality between all of his offspring that we all, no matter what was going on, there was always wrestling. This is something that we were gathered to, whether back in the 80s, as early as the 80s, going to these shows in Nassau Coliseum, watching these shows on Madison Square Garden, back when the lights were dimmed to give that big light, that big fight feel, where he would have pay-per-views over at the house. We would all get together and gather for these things and we all have such love for this watching guys in their underwear become sweaty messes and beat each other up, and we all love it. To this day, we all love it and we can attribute that to him. Baseball we love it, even though I think I'm the only Mets fan here, so the hell with the rest of you. But these are things that, examples of things that come from him, did you?

Speaker 1: 1:08:08

forget that I'm on this call? Say again Did you forget that I'm on this call? Say again Did you forget that I'm on this call? I'm a huge Mets fan too. Oh, but you're a Yankees fan. No, I'm a Mets fan. First, I always have been no there's no one first.

Speaker 3: 1:08:21

You can't like them both. It just you're confused. I just think that you're tired and confused.

Speaker 1: 1:08:32

You're in Florida with the rest of the retired folk.

Speaker 3: 1:08:34

You just need to go to sleep, I mean you're confused about the fact that you were actually left at the orphanage, but somehow you still ended up at the house. Well, I think that's a testament to my ability to survive.

Speaker 1: 1:08:41

You spoke about some of the things that you do hold on to, that you'd rather not think about, but sometimes creep into your brain.

Speaker 3: 1:08:49

What kind of things rather not think about but sometimes creep into your brain. What kind of things. I think about him being verbally abusive. I think about him talking badly of our mother to us. I think about him talking badly about each other to us. I think about his being irresponsible. I think about him sitting on the couch playing his video game console while we are trying to raise our younger brothers Just being a terrible human being, and he would have moments of where the person that he could have been would creep out. I remember there was a time we went to a yard sale. I was maybe 12. He would like to go to yard sales to see if he could find train stuff, because I think it was Michael that said earlier that he was just. He loves his Lionel trains and even through later life he had finally an opportunity to have his trains running on that platform downstairs and such. So he would. It would take me to these yard sales and such.

Speaker 3: 1:09:52

And there was this one time that there was a bunch of books on the ground, uh, and I'm looking at this books and it's about a jet and fighter planes, uh, and he said you find something that you like. I said, yeah, I found this book, but they uh, they're asking ten dollars for it. So he pulls in, he looks in his pocket, he goes, he pulls out some cash and he looks at how much he has, goes see if they'll take seven. He hands it to me, uh, and they said, yes, that was just a complete random act of kindness, but was so infrequent, uh, that it was just completely unexpected because you just never saw stuff like that.

Speaker 3: 1:10:29

So, another example I bring that up because that's an example of something I try to hold on to, which I hope that most people can say that memories like that or something like that are a dime, a dozen with their father. I hope so. I hope that everybody out there or just, even though we know it just ain't true, there's so few and that's why we hold on to him so dearly, because there's so few of them. In the second it's gone. But yeah, he was racist, he was a misogynist, he was a bigot, he was cruel. He was cruel to us and he talked badly about each other in front of us. He was mean, he was vindictive, he was spiteful and, like I said earlier, he lived in a past that never happened.

Speaker 3: 1:11:27

He was something that he would say to Joe and Mike, to your mom, who was like a mom, to Nick and I. I can't tell you how many times they would say well, I've been babysitting the kids and her response was no, john, you're being a parent. It's so easy. And I could go on and on, but I don't want to go on them because there's just so much of that. It's, it's heartbreaking. You know that when you can just talk about stuff like that, often just write the drop of a, the drop of a hat, and that's the stuff at the tip of your tongue, and you know that. I can keep going, going and going going.

Speaker 1: 1:12:09

Well, so let me ask you this, since you are the only one of the four of us that have kids of your own. You have one daughter who is she just turned four. You have another one who will be born in a few months. How have all the things that you went through led you to go through fatherhood differently? You never stopped being a father. You're again. You're a father of one, you're about to be a father of two. So what have you taken from what we went through? I'd like to hear a little bit of both and going to use that to make sure that the next generation is better.

Speaker 3: 1:12:44

At times, I overdo it because I'm so terrified. Overdo it because I'm so terrified. Now, I've been terrified of uh wasting my life the way that he wasted his um. I am terrified of uh being like him as a father. Uh, to the point where I think I overdo it and try not to be like him.

Speaker 3: 1:13:08

Uh, the first thing that I want to do and this is nothing against divorced parents, because sometimes, as we all know that sometimes parents are better off being divorced than they are being together. It's just the way it is, but I would hope that, even though that two people can't be together as a couple, that they should want to be a good parent as best that they can. Now, as far as me being a father, probably the first thing that I want to make sure that I do is to be there, because that's something that he wasn't there for us. Even though he may have been there in person, he wasn't there. He wasn't responsible.

Speaker 3: 1:13:44

Look, I'm not a perfect person. I've got my own problems, my own demons that I'm just trying to combat on a daily basis. Uh, but I am so proud of uh, my daughter, soon to be two daughters. I want to give them every opportunity to make a fair life for themselves. I want to make sure that and to I want to bring them up the right way. I want to try to to try to have conversations that I couldn't have with him. I do my best to have patience with them. I try to be very careful about what I say, especially the context in which I say certain things. Bottom line, I think it all starts with being there and, again, that's not an indictment against people who are divorced and may not have custody of their children. That's not what I mean.

Speaker 1: 1:14:36

People can be divorced and they can still be there. They can be present for their children.

Speaker 3: 1:14:42

He may have been physically present with us at times and for our two younger siblings much more so than us but he was never there. I have talked about how he at times he showed glimpses of the person that he should have been, but for the most part in my I feel like he was just a um, it was borderline, terrible um I. It's important to me to be a person that can be a role model to them, somebody that can blaze a path for them to follow, somebody who will lead by example, somebody who will not make excuses. I mean, how many times did he make excuses to us about everything that happened in his life, everything that derailed him? He did nothing but make excuses, but he never did anything about it.

Speaker 3: 1:15:38

One door closed, another door opened. All he could do is bitch about the door that closed in front of him. He couldn't separate the force from the troops. He wanted to live in that past and he chose to be bitter. He had wonderful children that he could have given us life lessons. He could have just talked to us, he could have just been a father, but he did, he didn't and he wasn't. I just want to be there. I wanted to be that example, the example that we didn't have, at least by him.

Speaker 1: 1:16:10

Knowing what we've all gone through, the four of us, do you feel that that has given you the desire to make sure that you are better for your children, for your wife, for your family?

Speaker 3: 1:16:25

Oh, absolutely. I can't tell you how many times that I've felt it, and not to mention said it to my wife. It's very important. I don't want to be like him. Nobody should ever want or should have to say that or feel that they have to say that. I wish that nobody felt that way. But I look back and hell, when we were kids, it was. This is what life was to us. We didn't know what it was like to live in a household with two parents. This is what life was to us. We didn't know what it was like to live in a household with two parents.

Speaker 3: 1:16:53

Whatever happens is more important to me that I learn from this. I use our upbringing, I use what we went through and watching what our brothers and sisters went through, and to use that to not be like him, to use that as a lesson, is, unfortunately, what not to do. We each of us have some of his uh, his character traits, some for the good, some for the bad. I make sure I do whatever I can. I try to. I try to stay as patient as possible. I don't know why he became the person that he did other than that. Uh, he was just bitter for what didn't happen. They wanted to happen, we don't know. I tried to keep that in mind. I really do, because I don't like being up on. I never had, even when he was alive. So again, I try to use these things as a tool, as a life lesson Don't be like this.

Speaker 3: 1:17:50

But at the same time, when we go back to those little things, those positive memories, I hope that my daughters love baseball as much as I do. I remember back in the early to mid 80s when he was getting pamphlets, back when analytics in baseball was a relatively new and obscure thing. He was getting Baseball Digest in black and white and they were talking about analytics in baseball and he was teaching me about that stuff. I have a daughter who loves to do puzzles and she has asked me a couple of times to teach her to play chess. I remember our father playing chess with us.

Speaker 3: 1:18:28

I remember my daughter sitting on my knee and us watching a movie and I think to myself you know, one thing that we're always able to talk about or just to be able to do in silence and appreciate was watching the movie. I hope that she has a passion for film and for the arts. These things are relevant because I use those in bringing her up and it helps me try to think of him in a positive light that if this is something that can carry on, that was important between he and I. I hope that I can carry this on between myself and my daughter. I don't like thinking about him in a negative way. It makes me happy when I can think about these few positive things.

Speaker 1: 1:19:09

I appreciate that All of it. Mike, let's hear from you.

Speaker 2: 1:19:15

I was supposed to be at work that day. I was supposed to work from 4.30 in the morning until 1 o'clock.

Speaker 1: 1:19:20

I will say that when I called you that morning, I was shocked that I had woken you up, because I talked to you a few days earlier and you said that you were working on Saturday.

Speaker 2: 1:19:29

Yeah, I work every Saturday and Sunday. I don't have weekends off, and that's usually my shift on.

Speaker 2: 1:19:33

Saturdays is 4.30 am to 1 pm. But the day before that Friday my boss and I got into a big fight, a huge fight. I told him I'm not coming in tomorrow, I'm not coming this weekend. Fast forward past all that, laying in bed, you hear the vibrating of the phone off. I always leave my phone on silent or do not disturb and uh, you hear the vibrating off the nightstand right. So I'm like, yeah, fuck, it's probably just something from work. And so then I heard it again and I'm like, yeah, it definitely worked. And I heard the double vibrate which is a text message. It's like, yeah, fuck it, I'm not gonna look at it. And then I look at it again and then I I hear the library yes, I'm going to check it. And it was you.

Speaker 2: 1:20:11

And I think I had three missed calls from you and a text that said you need to call me ASAP. And when I read that, I knew it, because you never text me or call me that early in the day. So I knew what you were going to say and you know where are you. So I was home. He said is joe home? I said yeah, I think he's sleeping because I need to wake him up. So I said just say it. And he goes uh, you know you? You said say what? And I said just say that dad died. And you said you said yeah, he did. He said okay. So I went downstairs, I got joe, we the four-way call for a few minutes and I just went upstairs in my room and I just sat on the edge of the bed.

Speaker 2: 1:20:48

Veronica heard you know. So she was my wife, heard what was said. She's like hugging me and stuff and I'm not crying yet. I'm just kind of sitting there like okay, and kind of what Joe said before, a little relief because he wasn't a pain in the ass. Phone calls at one in the morning, two in the morning, having to rearrange our schedules, blah, blah, blah, all that kind of stuff. Yeah, yeah, I'm glad that was over. But at the same time my father just died.

Speaker 2: 1:21:10

So I just went for a long walk around the neighborhood, just walked, and I called my friend. I called my best friend and I talked to him and I didn't know what to do. And then I just went back to the house and I knocked on mom's door and I told her. And when I told her I lost it and I just couldn't keep it together anymore. So I just started crying. A little baby fucking cried and then went back in my bedroom. I sat on the floor against the wall and just cried. When I sat down I texted him his number, you know saying I love you, dad. And a little while later Johnny came down.

Speaker 2: 1:21:50

I went up to the storage unit place where a bunch of stuff was and I remember pictures being there. So I took some pictures out from the album there and went back to the house and johnny got there and you know, mom went out, got bagels, that kind of stuff I wasn't hungry. And then then people start texting you. You know I'm so sorry and because I told my best friends and he told the other guys in the group and I don't want to talk to anybody and then just cried a lot and for the next couple days, and then you know that was a Saturday and actually that night I felt bad for Joe because we were celebrating his birthday that night because it was May 8th and his birthday is the 5th and we're supposed to celebrate his birthday and then the next day was Mother's Day.

Speaker 2: 1:22:33

But in my head I wanted to make it a point to where we don't not give Joe his birthday and give Mom Mother's Day because Dad died. And then that Monday everybody went to work. I stayed home and I just hooked up to VCR and I just started popping in a bunch of old videos and stuff like that and just cried there's a lot doesn't get easier, you know. Just, you gotta learn how to deal with it. I was mad. I was, I was very mad. Uh, for a lot of reasons, to why kind of what johnny touched on it was that because he didn't have to die at 73.

Speaker 2: 1:23:05

He didn't have to if the motherfucker took care of himself, if he didn't drink coca-cola like it was going out himself, if he didn't drink Coca-Cola like it was going out of style, if he didn't eat pasta every fucking night, if he didn't eat rice every night, if he would have done different things, he would have been around longer. I was also mad because he spent so much time being an asshole to everybody. All we wanted to do was just spend time with him. Favorite thing to do was to sit on the couch and watch a pay-per-view with him, watch Raw with him. I remember being a kid and coming home from work and waking us up, giving Joe and I an Oreo and sneak us into the playroom and watching Raw for a few minutes. But he spent so much time being a little crybaby bitch about a lot of stuff that I was mad and it just fucking annoyed me and it really pissed me off and it also made me upset More, not annoyed. It infuriated me to know that he died with nothing 60% because of him, 40% because of another person. At that part when I went to live with him, I guess he was just trying to do things right and fix our relationship. He got fucking destroyed in that and it just sucked.

Speaker 2: 1:24:13

Here's a guy who had everything At one point he had a wife, he had kids, he had a house, he had a boat, he had a dog, he had a good job, and slowly he just pushed everything and everybody away, for whatever reason, whatever it was, whatever the issue, whatever in in his own mind he felt like doing whether it was because he was spoiled growing up or whether it was because he thought he was untouchable.

Speaker 2: 1:24:34

There was a discussion amongst a couple of us about what to do with a certain somebody and I felt, you know, I thought it was the right thing to do was include this person. And they put on a nice fucking show at that funeral and it made me so mad because I I it didn't make me mad yet it was the last time that the six of us will ever be together again. It was the last time and, uh, we captured a moment there together that is on my phone. I'll never delete it. It's one of my favorite pictures around the situation of course, circumstances, because I know I knew it as we took it that it was the last time the six of us would ever be together five of us? Yeah, definitely not. The five of us have a lot more, you know, time together, so with that.

Speaker 1: 1:25:17

But the six of us. I knew it wasn't gonna happen again.

Speaker 2: 1:25:19

And then, of course, after it was done, never reached out, never heard back and all that, you know, whatever. And that really because I felt like an idiot, because I, I went to bat and I, you know, I stuck up and I tried to do what I thought was the right thing and it really wasn't. The day of the funeral was hard because, even though he died, you still had that day to look forward to I'll put it, not looking forward to, but you know you'll be around people, you'll be with your brothers, you'll be with your family. And then you get there and you got to put the box in the ground and you got to put the bagpipes and again crying like a baby I think, about it every day.

Speaker 2: 1:25:57

I'm not gonna lie to you. I do, um, I think about the good times. I try to block out all the messed up times I do. I don't know if I deal with it the right way or not. I make jokes about it, spit it, or I'll make a joke like I did before, you know, with pulling up the you know the pen and stuff like that's just how I deal with it. When I'm around my friends, I'll make a joke about it because they, they all, they knew him. They'd only been a bunch of times. Some reason they all liked him.

Speaker 1: 1:26:19

It wasn't just a ladies man, he, he knew how to charm everybody he did, he really did.

Speaker 2: 1:26:25

That's why everybody.

Speaker 1: 1:26:25

That's why all of your friends like them.

Speaker 2: 1:26:27

Fair point I'll say stuff and you know I'll make jokes and stuff like that, but it sits there in my head every day and to me what I had with him was wrestling and that was lovely.

Speaker 1: 1:26:40

Thanks, joe yeah, if you thought that that wasn't going to get caught on the microphone you were wrong, my friend.

Speaker 2: 1:26:50

Yeah, for me it was wrestling Nintendo and movies. I like watching the Terminator movies with them, the Rocky movies with them, lethal Weapons with them, certain movies. You know, we all have that little Super Nintendo, nes classic thing. But I went out and bought a Super Nintendo to play his copy of All-Stars. His copy is Zelda. You know that kind of stuff.

Speaker 2: 1:27:17

So little bits and pieces I'll keep from here and there. I will never, ever, ever, ever in my life do 90 of stuff to veronica or whoever my wife will be in the future after that one falls apart. Um, I will never do to them, to her what he did to my to mom. Um, as far as arguing and starting fights and breaking shit and throwing stuff and stuff like that, I'll never do that. I'll get mad. I'll never do that.

Speaker 2: 1:27:34

And if I'm lucky enough to have a kid one day, there's plenty of things that I'll do that he did. There's a lot of things that I won't do that he did. I'll never be too busy to take him to a basketball practice or find a bullshit reason to punish him for. You know, don't have to do something. I'll try and make Christmas magical. I'll see if they like wine out training. I'll try and get that on them. I love to sit up with them and watch raw or WrestleMania, something like that. You know I'll do that stuff. I won't fall asleep on the couch and be like, oh you know, hey, mom, you want to watch whatever the fuck. His name, her, her. I'll say this the best parts of my childhood were when you and Johnny came over on the weekends when we were kids, without a doubt, seeing your green Honda pull up, where I think I had a silver one also. At some point I had a silver one for about 10 months and then.

Speaker 1: 1:28:20

I got driven off the road. Leaving college one night, a guy cut me off. He was trying to make a turn and basically ended up driving over the curb and destroying the undercarriage and then I got the green one.

Speaker 2: 1:28:30

Got the green one. I think you drove the Buick for a while too right?

Speaker 1: 1:28:33

I had the Buick for, yeah, that was Papu's car. For anybody who doesn't know, papu was grandpa in Greek. Yeah, I had the Buick for probably seven or eight months and the engine went and got my first real shit box. I had a Mercury Topaz, which I had it for three months and it was in the shop six times and then I got basically made them take that car back, got a different car and on began the history of my cards yeah, but that was always the coolest part, especially if it was a wrestling sunday.

Speaker 2: 1:29:04

Uh, you guys would stay. I remember watching then for some reason. I remember watching the 94 rumble with you guys. They take or died and got taken up to the heavens, stuff like that and you were sitting on the love seat underneath that lamp that used to hang, with the chain it used to hang on the beam there, the chandelier yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:29:21

I remember sitting there, I just looked up at you I said, is he really dead? You said yeah, he's dead. Going to the batting cages, going to the baseball field, playing basketball, playing tag if it was raining outside. Then we play video games together or play board games together or watch shit together, you and home run derbies, barbecues at your mom's house, all that kind of stuff. That, for us, was the coolest thing in the world. You heard the term half brother. I never did that. Half brother, half sister bullshit. You were just brothers and sisters and that was it I just want to reject for one second.

Speaker 3: 1:29:51

uh, I'm glad you brought that up. He, I remember and this is one of those uh good things that I could attribute to him. He said to I think was probably both nick and I, and this was before joe was coming in and shortly before that, and he said to us they are not your half brothers, don't ever think of them as your half brothers or your half siblings. They are your brothers and they are your sisters. That was very impactful on me and he said it with a lot of conviction. He meant it. He wanted us to be brothers. Now looking back, probably because that was the shit for him to do, but I just wanted to add to what you were saying that it was important to him that Nick and I saw you as our brothers.

Speaker 2: 1:30:42

Yeah, that's how I always felt. Those are the coolest times. Like I said earlier, you guys came over on Christmas Eve and we did the big thing and that was always cool.

Speaker 1: 1:30:51

Thanks for sharing all that, mike, I really appreciate. I honestly I appreciate everything that all three of you have said. A lot of what you all have spoken about I knew and a lot of what you've each spoken about I did not know. It doesn't come as any surprise to hear the things that you guys individually have dealt with. You know, especially since dad died, I had my own struggles too and I don't think that I had mentioned this to. I honestly can't remember if I had mentioned it to any of you.

Speaker 1: 1:31:19

After the first morning that I found out that he had died, I got the call from the nursing home. I had actually missed the call by a couple of minutes. I woke up, saw it as a missed call, called them right back. The nurse had told me they were getting ready to transport him to the hospital because his blood pressure was dropping. He was really uncomfortable. The day before he had told me he had texted me and said that his blood pressure had dropped and then it recovered. But they couldn't figure out why. And I remember telling him if you need to go to the hospital, you go to the hospital. And of course he said, fuck that, I'm not going anywhere, I'm fine and I hung up with him and I called one of the nurses. I said if you need to take him to the hospital, he's going to tell you he doesn't want to go. You take him. And of course they said absolutely so.

Speaker 1: 1:32:04

When they called me that Saturday morning they said his blood pressure was dropping. We were getting ready to take him to the hospital. Of course he fought the whole time. Finally he agreed. They were getting him dressed, getting him ready to go, and as they were getting ready to transfer him from his bed to the stretcher, the ambulance was waiting outside ready to take him to the hospital. And as they were about to transfer him over to the stretcher, he coded. And then she said that they worked on him, tried to resuscitate him, I think she said, for about 35 minutes and he never regained consciousness and ultimately they had to declare him.

Speaker 1: 1:32:40

As I was hearing this the first time, I was almost anticipating her saying that they got breathing again, they took him to the hospital, but then, when she said we weren't able to resuscitate him and he passed away, I just remember sitting there kind of I don't even know what the word is, you know with a shock or just baffled, whatever, for a few seconds and I said, wow, he's gone. And she said, yes, I'm so sorry. And you know, I said thank you and I thanked her and I said please convey on behalf of all of his children to you, your entire staff, our gratitude and appreciation for all that you did for him. And she said that he would be taken to either the hospital or the medical examiner, so then they would contact the funeral home and just take it from there. And then within a couple of minutes, I hung up and just sat there it was like 5.30 on a Saturday morning because I was in Texas at the time and Maxie, our cat for anybody who doesn't know, maxie was just rubbing up against me and almost like she knew I needed a little bit of love. Rubbing up against me and, you know, almost like she knew I, you know, needed a little bit of love. Fortunately she was willing to give it and not just want food from me. So sat there and thinking about all the things that needed to be done and, of course, my first thought is I've got to wake up Kim and I've got to tell her. I've got to call you guys and tell her. But again, it's you know five, you know 630 in New York, where you guys were, and I didn't want to but I knew it needed to be done, and so then that's, I told you guys and then I let Kim sleep and then told her afterwards, but while I was sitting there Joe, this is very similar and actually, mike, this is similar to what you said.

Speaker 1: 1:34:21

The first thought that I had was relief on two levels. One, I was relieved that he was not suffering anymore because, as we all know, he was in a lot of pain for a very long time and, yes, most of that was his own doing. The hip was not. He was in a car accident back in the 60s. It's not his fault that he was in a car accident, that he went through the windshield, the car rolled over and he spent almost a year in the hospital. That's not his fault. Unfortunately, shit happens to people and sometimes there are lifelong injuries that you have to deal with afterwards. Everything else beyond that, yeah, it was his fault. He didn't take care of himself for a very long time. He ate like shit. He wasn't physically active when he could have been, when he still had the ability to be. He just abused his body so badly the fact that he died at 73, yeah, for some people 73 is a good life. Probably the last 20 years of his life were largely spent on the couch or the chair because he just didn't want to do anything else and it caught up with him in a bad way. So, yes, I was relieved that his suffering was over. I was relieved that he was finally no longer in pain and I was also relieved that it was finally over for the four of us.

Speaker 1: 1:35:41

The shit that we went through for years basically becoming his full-time caretakers even me, from as much as I did in Texas I couldn't have been at the nursing home. It was during COVID, so really none of us I couldn't have been at the nursing home. It was during COVID, so really none of us were able to do much at the nursing home. But once he was in the nursing home, it was originally rehab, and then he wouldn't do anything that he was supposed to do. His primary insurance got canceled, his secondary insurance got canceled. The nightmare that I went through dealing with the main person at the facility to get his Medicaid approved and, and finally it did. Then three weeks later he died, which of course was typical for him.

Speaker 1: 1:36:16

Obviously, he didn't plan it that way, but that's one of those things that I can laugh a little bit at. And, mike, like you said, how, with you and your buddies, how you guys just made jokes. I've told you guys this, this that this whole podcast with talking to people about their grief, their loss, it is different for everybody, but one of the ways that we process it is with humor we always have. We've done it with the four of us. We've done it with mike and dennis and ed um, the other three guys that are in this group, and it's okay. There's nothing wrong with making jokes about something, laughing in the face of death, if you will. It's how we dealt with it, because I think if we took the other approach and tried to process everything else that he put us through, we would go fucking crazy when everything was over planned, everything with the funeral home flew up to New York, we had the funeral, came back here and, honestly, I was largely okay for the most part.

Speaker 1: 1:37:16

Even when I went back to work, it was like a week and a half before the funeral. Everything had to be done. So Monday morning I went to work, because what else am I going to do. Obviously, I had to tell everybody at work, but it was just business as usual for me. My boss was like do you need to go home? I was like no, the funeral's in a week, it's in New York. No, I'm fine, let me just work, went up for the funeral, came back to work, flew back home, went back to work and for a few months I was fine. And then probably three, four months later is when things probably really started to unravel.

Speaker 1: 1:37:51

For me personally and it wasn't because I missed him, I wasn't distraught, I wasn't heartbroken, I wasn't full of grief. I was angry. I was angry at him for everything that he put us through. I was angry at him for the fact that he just was such a piece of shit to us mostly for most of our lives, that he just he mistreated everyone who ever came into his life. I was angry that he didn't take care of himself, that he mike, I think you had said it he, he could have. Well, actually you've all said it in different ways he, he could have had so much more out of life. He could have lived longer, he could have been healthier, he could have had so many different things in his life that most people just generally take for granted, and he didn't.

Speaker 1: 1:38:37

He was the perpetual victim. Everything that went wrong in his life was somebody else's fault. It was the way he did it. He destroyed five marriages with that mentality. He fractured a lot of relationships with most of his children with that mentality. It just sucked and I was just angry at a lot of things that he did and the way he handled things or didn't handle things. I was snapping at people. I started snapping at Kim for absolutely no reason. She certainly didn't deserve it and she recognized it. She knew exactly what it was about and she said I really think you need to talk to somebody.

Speaker 3: 1:39:15

And I did.

Speaker 1: 1:39:15

I went online. I found a therapist, had weekly meetings for six months. We talked about everything. Whatever there was to talk about, I got it out there. I was an open book.

Speaker 2: 1:39:26

I needed to be With regards to him or just life in general with regards to, you know, life in general, but mostly about him.

Speaker 1: 1:39:34

The anger that I had pent up was because of him. It wasn't because of anything that was going on with kim and I everything things with us are amazing, um. The anger was just. It was about the fact that I did address certain things with him, but there was a lot of things that I left unsaid because any of us know they never would have been properly addressed. He would have just blown them off. He wasn't capable most of the time of having a serious conversation or taking anything in his life seriously that needed to be.

Speaker 1: 1:40:07

We talked about all of that and at the end of the six months I got to a point where I certainly don't think I was cured, but I did get to a point where I was able to process what I was feeling. I was able to forgive him for being largely who he was and what he was. Unfortunately, I know that he really wasn't capable of more than that. It didn't solve anything. It didn't make anything better, but at the end of the day, if he had lived to be another 25 years older than he was, nothing would have changed. He would have continued to be who he was. He would have continued to not take care of himself.

Speaker 2: 1:40:49

We would have continued to take care of him that would have been the worst fucking thing ever if he lived 25 more years than yes yes, it absolutely would have been. There's no doubt about that um do you guys remember how much coke was in his house when he died? Coca-cola, by the way, not coke yeah, no, no, our father didn't drink or do drugs.

Speaker 1: 1:41:10

I don't think he ever with the exception of the edible that.

Speaker 2: 1:41:14

Mike ate Other than that?

Speaker 1: 1:41:18

I never saw him. He never did any drugs. I never saw the man with so much as a beer in his hand.

Speaker 2: 1:41:23

Yeah, I don't think I've ever seen him take a sip of alcohol. Okay, so 16,. Two little bottles of Coke, two active cans of Coke, which he blamed on Joe. Two little bottles of Coke, two active cans of Coke, which he blamed on Joe. He goes there on sale. I bought them for your brother. I said, joe, did you tell dad to buy you Coke? He goes. No, I told him not to buy any soda. Yeah, well, so that's the thing. So he would buy. Okay, so if, like, he would do his peapod order and I would want a 12 pack of coke or coke zero or whatever, he would absolutely get it for me, right, yeah, but I like he would order, like you said, all that coke because it's on sale, or he'd order any entomins snack and I'd physically yell at him, which is part of the reason why I probably felt relieved when he passed, because all he would do was buy, like, those little. I think they're intimates, they're like pies, mini pies and cherry that's my the last day I ever saw him.

Speaker 2: 1:42:26

I took him to the hospital, right. It took me like an hour and a half to get him out of the fucking bed and dressed him into the wheelchair, get him out of the house. I took all the they're table talk. I think they're called, like, individual pies. Yeah, that's what.

Speaker 1: 1:42:39

I want so.

Speaker 2: 1:42:43

The day that I went there and he pissed himself in the bed and me and Rob had to get you know, all that shit. I took all of his pies and I put them in the In the floor room on the table. So, wheel, let him out, get him in the wheelchair going through the Florida room, whatever, whatever. Get him in the locked doors, get him in the car, get him in there, strap him in, put the wheelchair in the back, the wheelchair in the back, go around. I go to strap myself in. I'm looking at him. He, as I went back to lock the inside door, he grabbed it and hit it under his shirt. And as I got him in the car, he took it out of the box and fucking started eating it. And I look at him like what the fuck are you doing? He goes what? I wanted, a pie, and he got blueberry on his fucking nose and shit because he went face first into the goddamn pie. Yeah, that sounds just like him. Yeah, he would use, yeah, nah 16. Yeah, he would use, yeah, nah 16.

Speaker 2: 1:43:32

Those pies suck. They did. They were terrible. Those pies are not good, they're horrible pies. They're not anything good.

Speaker 2: 1:43:38

They didn't look good, if I were to buy a pie, would that?

Speaker 1: 1:43:42

be the last kind of pie I'd buy he loved everything that he everything that was unhealthy for him. He loved it. Oreos M&M's Malamars Chunkies he would tear up a box of Malamars.

Speaker 2: 1:43:58

Yeah, he would Chunkies. They're not even that good Chunkies. No, they suck. No Malamars. Malamars are amazing. Malamars are great. What are you talking about? I'm not saying they're bad, Don't get me wrong. What are you talking about? I mean, I'm not saying they're bad.

Speaker 2: 1:44:12

Don't get me wrong, maybe it's too much marshmallow, but go ahead when we were kids. I haven't seen them in fucking years, but you remember how Oreos on Christmas time would come in a tin with the year on it. I remember those. Those were cool. Every year they would come out, there would be a decorative tin and there would be a pack of Oreos inside I don't remember that at all. I think that's 95, if I'm not mistaken, I remember the Oreo tins.

Speaker 1: 1:44:35

Oreos are like little pieces of crack. They are so amazing they are. There aren't many things better than.

Speaker 2: 1:44:43

Oreos. I like the dipped Oreos and Nutella, so good. No, you see, now you just.

Speaker 1: 1:44:50

You're not just gilding the lily. Mike, you just set the damn lily on fire.

Speaker 2: 1:44:55

Looking for you. I don't know what that means. You overstepped. I'm sorry. It won't happen again.

Speaker 1: 1:45:01

I'm sorry, let me speak in one-syllable words.

Speaker 2: 1:45:04

Do you guys you and Johnny remember when you came up with this? It's not this one, but this game. Joe and I were playing it and we got to fucking Shredder.

Speaker 1: 1:45:11

Would you like to say what you're holding up?

Speaker 2: 1:45:13

Ninja Turtles what game is it? Four Turtles in Time? I think Johnny brought it over. Yeah, supertime, I think Johnny brought it over and we were playing it. We got to the last level. We were fighting Shredder and fucking Dad's rooting for us to die out so fast, to turn off the fucking game and put whatever he wanted on tv. I mean, like we died, you know, like this, he's up out of that chair, turned it off, put on whatever. I don't know who's baseball, I don't know what it was, but fucking mr holland's opus, something like that, mr holland's opus, that's. That's what you would do the the on the on the hot box. You remember it would be the same movie on pay-per-view all fucking day. It was Twister or Gump or Opus or some other crap.

Speaker 1: 1:45:56

At least he liked good movies.

Speaker 2: 1:45:58

Yeah, I remember once I remember that movie. What the hell was it with Bruce Willis? Death Becomes Us or Death Becomes Her, or something like that. I remember watching that Scared the hell out of me.

Speaker 1: 1:46:12

You were going somewhere with that, that's about it.

Speaker 2: 1:46:16

I thought he got cut off. I thought he, like the connection, died.

Speaker 1: 1:46:22

No, no, no, the connection didn't cut off, his brain cut off.

Speaker 2: 1:46:25

His brain just fried.

Speaker 1: 1:46:28

Did you have an edible today, Mike?

Speaker 2: 1:46:29

Yeah, a little punch bar. Imagine him, no, no, he can. Mike, yeah, imagine him, no, no, he can't be high. Imagine him high, me, yeah, you, I can barely imagine him sober. I don't know if I really want to try to imagine him on.

Speaker 2: 1:46:44

There was one time I went to a bachelor party with some buddies from work in AC and we just smoked some weed going up there and I was incredibly fucking high and it was bad, fucking high and it was bad. We couldn't leave the room for like an extra hour because I was just out of control I couldn't I really couldn't walk.

Speaker 2: 1:46:59

I mean like there was this pillow in the room that I wouldn't let go of and my friends hid the fucking pillow from me. I was crying and I was like fucking, I was looking everywhere and then it was horrible that order food to the room because I just I was wouldn't fucking, I couldn't take me out did you get the pillow back? I got the pillow back did the pillow have a name.

Speaker 2: 1:47:20

No, I didn't name the pillow, but it was like one of those like long like, uh, cylinder ones. It was like a body, I guess a body pillow type I don't know if it's called that, but but smaller. Yeah. Yeah, that shit was comfortable as fuck man.

Speaker 1: 1:47:32

Knowing you as well as I do, I figured you would have given that pillow a name during that episode.

Speaker 2: 1:47:36

I think I was too young and immature back then to name stuff.

Speaker 1: 1:47:39

But you weren't too, young and immature to smoke weed with your friends.

Speaker 2: 1:47:42

No, I was high as a motherfucker. See, there you go, but I never really smoked weed. I don't really. I apologize your friends, don't I really? Yeah, I apologize your friends, don't I mean to be fair. My, I got three friends. None of them smoke weed. So, yeah, no, I never. Uh, every once in a while at a party, you know take a, you know take a bump or something like that, not a bump like a drag out of a boy, something like that, but I'd say a bump is a different drug.

Speaker 1: 1:48:05

My friend, yeah that's a different drug. That's yeah, we're not, we're not gonna talk about that.

Speaker 2: 1:48:10

No, I remember he came home. I don't know what happened, but he was downstairs on the computer and he was high out of his mind and it wasn't on weed. I took a few. I mixed a couple, a few pills.

Speaker 1: 1:48:28

You were experimenting.

Speaker 2: 1:48:30

Yeah, and. I Never ran somebody out so quickly in my life, mom I swear to God. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:48:40

I took a couple Xanax.

Speaker 2: 1:48:43

I took a couple Xanax and then a couple, I think it was like Oxys or Vicus or something like that, and that just fucking put me in another dimension.

Speaker 1: 1:48:52

Yeah, I'm so glad you're past that.

Speaker 2: 1:48:55

Yeah, now I think I'd be broken. You know what I'm saying? You, half an idiot.

Speaker 1: 1:48:59

Thank you. I think that's definitely a good place to wrap that part of the conversation up. Yeah, it is what it is with him and he was who he was. He wasn't ever going to change. The best thing that came out of his life, as far as I'm concerned, are all of my siblings, most of my siblings. The three of you, helene, you guys are one of the best things of my life and it sucks that we all had to go through what we did, but I'm glad that at the end of it, we all ended up with each other. At this point, I think we're closer than ever, whether because of him, in spite of him, we are and I know that's something that will never go away.

Speaker 2: 1:49:36

Yes, certainly Probably a little bit of both, but yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:49:39

Probably a little bit of both, but that's okay, yeah we're here, we're going to wrap up.

Speaker 1: 1:49:43

That's right, and we are here now and we always will be. There's one thing that we're going to wrap up with real quick. This going to wrap up with real quick. This is something that is also going to be a part of all the other interviews. We won't go as extensive just because there are three of you. We're going to do a quick little rapid fire question session. Let's go in age order Jack, you answer first, then Joe and then Mike. I'm just going to throw out a question and then you guys give your answer. This is just meant to be fun. It has nothing to do with what we just talked about. It's a way to end this call on a light note. Ready hit it.

Speaker 1: 1:50:15

Favorite season autumn, summer spring what word do you hate hearing?

Speaker 2: 1:50:23

excuse, no, there's maybe two words, but politically incorrect we can go with that I don't. Yeah, that's a tough one.

Speaker 1: 1:50:32

What's your favorite dessert?

Speaker 2: 1:50:34

All of them. I'm not even trying to be funny. I love, love, love dessert.

Speaker 3: 1:50:41

Vanilla bean ice cream, my mom's chocolate mousse to make sure Christmas.

Speaker 1: 1:50:44

Cool. What is your favorite type of music?

Speaker 3: 1:50:49

Classic rock.

Speaker 2: 1:50:50

I'd probably go hip hop. I'm not sure what type it is, but stuff like uh, lincoln park, that that type.

Speaker 1: 1:50:55

Okay, what do you collect?

Speaker 2: 1:50:58

comic books and movies um nothing wrestlers and trains wrestling action figures, you mean? Yeah, I got something I can show you, if you want no, I'm good thanks. Oh, okay, yeah, I don't think I collect anything. I'm sorry, I don't think I collect anything anymore.

Speaker 1: 1:51:17

That's okay. How often do you floss? Oh fuck.

Speaker 2: 1:51:22

That's my answer.

Speaker 3: 1:51:26

Yep, that's my answer and I'm sticking to it.

Speaker 2: 1:51:28

Yep.

Speaker 3: 1:51:30

I plead the fifth.

Speaker 2: 1:51:31

You're on relatively good sleep, though that's crazy, you know.

Speaker 1: 1:51:35

Is your bed made right now?

Speaker 3: 1:51:37

Nope.

Speaker 2: 1:51:37

Yes, yes, my bed is always made because I sleep on top of my covers. That makes sense, I gotta give credit to Veronica. Though I'm not good at making the bed, she does it all nice and pretty with a million fucking pillows. Oh, if you want me to be honest, if I didn't sleep on top of my covers and everything so when I wake up it's still made, I would never make my bed Ever.

Speaker 1: 1:51:57

How do you usually answer the telephone?

Speaker 2: 1:51:59

Yello yeah, either a hello or a yo I hit him with a what up, motherfucker.

Speaker 1: 1:52:08

If you were to write a book, what would it be about?

Speaker 2: 1:52:12

Just give me a second on this. Some horror, I don't know what, but people will be dying.

Speaker 3: 1:52:17

My favorite movies Mike.

Speaker 2: 1:52:23

Accepting being Bald.

Speaker 1: 1:52:25

Okay. Do you sleep with stuffed animals? I sleep with two pit bulls.

Speaker 2: 1:52:30

No, come on. No on, no, never.

Speaker 1: 1:52:35

Mike, just based on what you've held up in front of the camera, I know you're full of shit. Do you like clothes shopping?

Speaker 2: 1:52:42

Yes, very much, very much. So I do I enjoy it Well for myself. If I'm going with a girlfriend and she takes three hours, then no.

Speaker 1: 1:52:52

Do you shower in the morning or at night?

Speaker 2: 1:52:55

At night. I shower mid-afternoon. Neither. I got to change my answer. I'm going with both.

Speaker 3: 1:53:04

I prefer to go in the morning time, but I have no problem showering at night time if necessary.

Speaker 2: 1:53:09

I'm definitely a night time shower, for sure. But when I go to the gym, obviously in the morning, I'll shower after that. Also, I prefer to shower before I got to do something. So if I'm working in the morning, I'd rather shower in the morning as opposed to at night.

Speaker 1: 1:53:25

Do you prefer social time or alone time? Alone time.

Speaker 2: 1:53:29

Yeah, alone, like I can't wait to hang up the phone right now. Can't wait.

Speaker 1: 1:53:37

What was the last thing you searched for in Google?

Speaker 3: 1:53:40

Probably porn. I'll tell you what this was PG.

Speaker 1: 1:53:43

Blake Griffin.

Speaker 2: 1:53:45

I don't think I'll tell you Last thing that I searched for.

Speaker 3: 1:53:48

Other than porn. I Googled the carbonara recipe. I'm making carbonara pasta carbonara tomorrow night and that's my first time doing it, so I've uh researched about six or seven different recipes, uh to try to give it a go nice.

Speaker 2: 1:54:04

My last google search was uh 700e for sale.

Speaker 1: 1:54:10

What is 700E? It's an engine.

Speaker 2: 1:54:18

I saw something about Blake Griffin, so I googled his Wikipedia page.

Speaker 1: 1:54:21

Nice, what do you think is your biggest flaw?

Speaker 2: 1:54:28

I'm too nice, too forgiving. What is your deepest fear? Death, death, but not my own.

Speaker 3: 1:54:38

I would have to say that my life was unfulfilled okay, what is your go to snack?

Speaker 2: 1:54:46

clip bars. Often, though, I'm fat, probably some sort of chip, don't really matter what, not a pretzel, though definitely not a pretzel Oreos. So I'm house sitting right now. This is quick. I'm house sitting right now. They asked me what do I like to eat for snacks. I said chips. They got me six bags of party sized Chips that I can choose from. I'm only here for seven days.

Speaker 1: 1:55:09

At least you're surrounded by people who love you, yeah. What is your favorite holiday? At least you're surrounded by people who love you, yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:55:16

What is your favorite holiday? Christmas puts me in the best spirits. The Christmas season just uplifts my spirits, but I really really like Halloween. I don't know what to choose. Those are mine. I'm going to lock in Christmas, though.

Speaker 3: 1:55:31

I'm going to say Christmas because, as my daughter has grown older and presents start to mean more, I'm past the age where a box or some crumpled up wrapping paper will do her good for about a week. It's becoming a lot of fun to watch her opening stuff up. So yeah, I'm going to have to go with Christmas.

Speaker 1: 1:55:54

That makes sense. What is your favorite item on a Chinese food menu?

Speaker 3: 1:56:00

Boneless spare ribs.

Speaker 2: 1:56:02

Probably that. Yeah, ribs boneless are on the bone. If I had to pick one, I'm going to go with the sweet and sour chicken.

Speaker 1: 1:56:10

Nice. Last question what is the best Halloween costume you ever wore? I'm going to expand on this.

Speaker 3: 1:56:18

I'm going to cheat. Growing up, I was sick for several Halloweens so I missed out on a lot of Halloweens, but I'm going to segue into that If you were to ask me. I have a very special relationship with the movie Halloween when I was about maybe four or five call five years old and this is what kind of lets my passion for films. I'm in our father's house. He is in his bedroom laying on the bed but his back is up against the headboard which is up against the wall, so he's kind of half sitting laying down. If you can follow, if you can envision that I walk into the bedroom and I, you know, basically ask you know, what are you doing or what have you? And he scoops me up and he puts me on the bed with him where, and he holds me like this and we watched and it was the ending part of halloween, still to this day.

Speaker 3: 1:57:13

I mean, it's a classic, one of my favorite movies of all time, and he was talking to me through it. All the time he got me wrapped in his arms like this and um and, but he was talking and I wasn't scared, I wasn't freaked out. One of the most suspenseful movies ever made and with a killer original score and, uh, he was with me and I think that in a large way and that started our, uh, my love for all things film and how we were able to communicate on all things film. So I really don't have anything to add about halloween, but I wanted to add that about specifically that movie and how it tied into my passion, my love for movies, and also I got it from him.

Speaker 1: 1:57:58

That's a good thing to tie in.

Speaker 2: 1:58:00

I don't really know. I guess I was the Burger King man one year but like when we were young, we all me, michael and Helene all had the same outfit. Like it was we all. It was like a hand-me-down, like that we all wore at one point when we were little. It was a clown or the Indian. Yeah, it was a clown.

Speaker 1: 1:58:19

I would have paid money to see Helene as the Burger King man.

Speaker 2: 1:58:23

But this was when I was older and I was driving and I went to a house. I went to a house party Halloween house party. I was was the Burger King man, but as a kid I would wear a wrestling shirt and a freaking cane mask. I'd go out as an Austin shirt and a cane mask. It didn't really make sense.

Speaker 1: 1:58:44

Yeah, probably.

Speaker 2: 1:58:44

Burger King man. I think I was the ghost face from Scream the most because I was popular for so many years in a row, but when I got older I was a Ninja Turtle a lot of years.

Speaker 1: 1:59:00

Nice.

Speaker 2: 1:59:01

Which one? Yeah, the blue one. Who's that Michelangelo?

Speaker 3: 1:59:07

I don't know Leonardo, leonardo, leonardo, leonardo Leonardo.

Speaker 2: 1:59:09

Leonardo, leonardo.

Speaker 3: 1:59:10

Leonardo.

Speaker 2: 1:59:10

Leonardo, leonardo, leonardo Dickhead, leonardo Dickhead, leonardo Dickhead.

Speaker 1: 1:59:14

Michael dressed up as Leonardo Dickhead for Halloween. I did. In the interest of time, mike, I know you need to go. This has been great Thank you all so much for doing this.

Speaker 2: 1:59:26

I'm going to say this, and I don't really mean it, as bad as it sounds, but this is better than I thought it would be. I just didn't know what to expect coming into this. Yeah, like I told you, I was fully intent on making fun of Nick's girth and shit like that, the entire duration of this fucking video well, I'm glad that we were able to get past that, that you got that out of your system before we even started this call.

Speaker 1: 1:59:51

I'm sorry that I didn't give you the chance to do that more, but I'm sure when I see you in a couple of months you will make up for lost time.

Speaker 2: 1:59:59

I'm going to load on you like a you on a Big Mac. Bro, you got no fucking chance.

Speaker 3: 2:00:02

Listen.

Speaker 2: 2:00:02

I know I don't participate much in that group chat but, Mike is one of the funniest guys I've ever like. Everything he says is hilarious. Everything he says About your mom, it's good stuff. You have to understand something.

Speaker 1: 2:00:20

Mike and I. So we've known each other since seventh grade. Of those three guys, he's the one that I've known the longest. There came a point at some point in I don't know, I want to say probably around ninth grade, tenth grade, where every one of our conversations always started with a your mom joke, and it has just not stopped. So it is as much of his DNA as anything else. What?

Speaker 2: 2:00:45

is nice lid mean? Why do you? Why does it start off with nice lid? By the way, what I mean?

Speaker 1: 2:00:50

Maybe you can't say it, but okay, I honestly don't know where that came from and I think that's something. I'm actually writing that down. I'm going to ask him how he got to saying nice lid. I really don't know. It just started with him one day and it never stopped.

Speaker 3: 2:01:12

It's probably something that somebody like Andrew Dice Clay said to somebody in the movie one time. He liked it, and then he would just say it and he would just say it to the hey, nice fucking lid. That's something that he would do and I'm pretty sure I'm willing to bet money that it has something in origin, something like that, no he's a funny fucker he is.

Speaker 2: 2:01:33

I met Billy Zane, richard Dreyfuss, coco Beware and what the fuck is his name? Kyle Reese from Terminator.

Speaker 1: 2:01:44

Michael Behan.

Speaker 2: 2:01:46

Michael Behan and Edward Prolong. Oh, eddie, furr, furr baby, all right, yeah, I got to get going though boys, oh, eddie, furr, furr baby. All right, yeah, I got to get going though boys.

Speaker 1: 2:01:56

Guys, thanks for this. I really appreciate it, thank you, love you all.

Speaker 2: 2:02:00

All right, love you guys. I'll talk to you all soon. See you, bye.

Speaker 1: 2:02:08

That wasn't too shabby for the first interview. I know that it took them a minute to open up, but in the end it was a much-needed conversation and I'm so glad that we all made the time for it. Anyone out there who might be thinking that you don't get to talk enough with your siblings take this as an example about how you don't need to wait until you're in person to have a good conversation. You have every imaginable form of communication technology in the palm of your hand. Use it to your advantage and call your siblings or your friends or anyone in your family. Don't make excuses. Anyone who's here knows that life is too damn short and none of us ever know for sure when tomorrow won't be here for someone we love. I really hope that you enjoy the interview and we are still getting warmed up. Next week I'll be talking with my three friends who make up the remainder of this group mentioned earlier. Bring a drink and a snack, because it's going to be another long one.

Speaker 1: 2:02:51

If you enjoyed that episode, then please go on to Apple Podcasts, give us five stars, leave a short message and tell us what you liked. Tell me which one of my brothers you thought was the funniest, which one you most relate, to Say anything you want, just make sure you get on there and give us a rating and a review If you have a story that you'd like to share, if you would like to be considered as being a guest on a future episode. Please stay tuned because once the website is up and running, you will have that chance to submit your story and potentially be a guest on the show. Remember, there are no rules to navigating grief and there's no timeline for doing it either.

Speaker 1: 2:03:19

Everyone needs to go at their own pace, but the most important part is taking the first step. Whether you want to contribute your own story or you just want to listen to others tell their stories, you need to know that you're in the right place, and you also need to know that nobody is alone in their grief or should ever feel like they don't have someone who will talk or listen to them. You always have both right here. Thank you for listening, and see you next time when I talk to my three lifelong friends, who are as entertaining as they come. This is Our Dead Dads, where we are changing the world one damaged soul at a time. See you next time.