Once we finally had the restaurant confirmed and the number of people attending the Celebration of Life, my mother suggested putting index cards on every table so guests could write a happy memory about my father and then read it aloud. “Something that will make Al smile” was how she would explain it to people.

I groaned. I told her it wasn’t fair to put anyone on the spot. Plus — and this was my primary objection — I did not want to pretend that my father was floating around the banquet room of Spasso Italian restaurant like Casper. Besides, many attendees had not seen him in close to a decade, not since dementia erased them from his memory.

I asked my mother if she wanted me to master the ceremony. “Yes,” she said. “And remember, it’s supposed to be a celebration.”

This restaurant hosted many of our family’s special occasions — high school graduations, my mother’s birthday, and a First Holy Communion. The food was red-saucey and unpretentious, but it was never delicious. I think my father loved the place mainly because it was consistently good enough.

I wasn’t nervous about having something to say in front of the 60 or so guests — I’d rehearsed some version of a eulogy for him for over 20 years, usually in the shower. When we were getting along, and our love for each other was effortless, the thought of my father dying filled me with unnavigable sorrow. I would listen to myself echoing wonderful, heart-opening words of comfort and wisdom to imaginary mourners, all of them bawling right along with me. I always knocked these pretend eulogies about my father out of the park.

But the luncheon would not be held inside my shower. Still, given how many thousands of words I’ve devoted to the complexities and sharpest edges of our relationship in this very newsletter, a bittersweet-but-up-tempo-tribute should be no problem. But if I was stuck, “Welcome to Spasso!” was an excellent way to open or close.

A couple of weeks ago, as I began to think about the best way to inject some humor into my speech without sacrificing gravitas, I got a text from a friend I knew from New York who’d recently moved out here to LA. “Did you hear about Nicky*?” I needed him to remind me who Nicky was. “Our buddy. Long hair. Tattoos.” He was part of the late-night crowd I’d hang out with at my favorite bar in Williamsburg. “Oh, right! What’s up with him?”

It turned out Nicky had taken a header out the window of his apartment in Brooklyn. Craziest thing was — his jacket caught the fence on the way down and flipped him over before he splatted onto the street. “So he’s alive?” I asked.

He was, but he was in the hospital with dozens of badly broken bones, staring down a long recovery. How lucky, I thought.

And then I could not stop thinking about it.

It should be noted that Nicky wasn’t someone I’d consider a real-life friend. The best way to describe him was a “3 A.M. friend,” a term I’d heard some guy use in an AA share last year. He said that when his alcoholism and drug use were at their peak, his best and only friends were the ones he talked to after 3 A.M., which was a brilliant summation of my interpersonal relationships from 2013-2015.

And that was who Nicky was to me — a laughing face in a noisy room of cigarette smoke and lunacy. I don’t think I’d ever seen him in daylight or anywhere besides that bar. And even though I saw him there three or four nights a week for more than a year, I couldn’t tell you what his voice sounded like or what he did for a living. But when you’re hanging out at the After-Afters consistently and find other messy, beautiful people who live that way, too, those people become full-fledged war buddies. “Hey, Nicky, think I should cut the ear off of this baby water buffalo?” And Nicky would yell, “Go for it! HOO-RAH!”

Then we’d smoke and drink and smoke and drink and do lines until one of us vanished before the sun came up without saying a word.

My sister and I stood up at the front of the room at the luncheon and thanked everyone for coming. She was elegant and kind and kept emotion out of it. She looked over at me to see if I had anything to add. “Welcome to Spasso!” I guess I was a little nervous.

After the waiters came and cleared the plates, my Uncle Jimmy asked me if I’d tap on a glass so he could get everyone’s attention. He had suddenly become the master of ceremonies, and I was relieved.

I’ve heard Uncle Jimmy speak at several family functions. He loves to stand up and say nice things about people when he gets a couple of drinks in him. He does a wonderful fighting-back-tears face, as he searches for the perfect words, shaking a fist like he’s about to throw dice against the back wall.

He began this speech by heralding my father’s bravery as he battled what he called the family disease. “He fought this the whole way. And he took it . . . like a man,” he looked up at the ceiling, the tears were winning. “Strong!” he said with two slow shakes of the dice. “This disease killed my grandfather, my father, and now my big brother.” Great start. Also: This was a lie.

Covid is actually what killed my father. He was in and out of the hospital in Jupiter several times right after the holidays, and during one of those visits, he caught Covid. A week later, he was transferred to hospice, and it took about three days for all of his organs to shut down before he took his last breath.

On the morning of his death, I called my mother and asked her when she could come because the nurse said we had four hours before the body would be moved. My saintly cousin drove my mother there right away. The person who came to transport the body to the funeral home was a peaceful-looking older man in his 70s with thin eyeglasses and big shoulders. He did not rush us; his kindness was quiet but radiant.

My mother kissed my father’s forehead. “Bye-bye, baby,” she said.

The man stood there solemnly as she shuffled over to me, waiting for permission to begin his terrible job. I nodded towards him. He put on another pair of plastic gloves and got to work as my mother sat on the chaise lounge near me. 

The man began to shake a big, white transport bag. The thin plastic lining swished and popped. He expressed more condolences and double-checked the cause of death. “He died of Covid?” I nodded again. His eyes grew big and rageful. “This is a nasty ghost!” he spat and shook his head. I could tell by his reaction that he was a religious man. 

When he began to fold my father’s arms, he moved them up and down back and forth. I expected to hear some crackling, hissing sounds but there was nothing like that, just normal, floppy alive-arm noises.

Then he began the zip-up process. He started at my father’s feet, tucking them in and placing them inside the bag. I said goodbye to my father’s giant, flat, ugly feet, remembering how he used to make fun of how gnarled they were. They were always calloused and flaky with peeling skin and broken nails. “These are some bad-looking dogs,” was his most common description.

My mother turned away when the man made his way up to my father’s torso. He placed a cloth over my father’s face and began the final turn. We had said goodbye in the abstract sense for a couple years. Even when all that was left of him were tubes in his nose and a slow pulse, it never hit us very hard. But now that the entirety of his physical form was packaged up, the loss had severely changed the altitude in the room — we were both dizzy. My mother fell over, laid face down, and wept.

Then, after my father’s body was all folded and zipped up, the kind man from the coroner gave me my father’s toe tag. I was puzzled, but I was too dazed to ask him why. I’m looking at it right now: 

Name: Daulerio
Rm. 303
Doctor: Dr. Pathak
Hospital/City: Trustbridge
Time Expired: 3:30 A.M. 
Date Expired: 01-11-23

When I told my sister about this, she was disgusted. “Oh, throw that away!”she said. “It’s not a coat check — we don’t get him back.” I saved it anyway. It’s in my bedside table drawer.

I can’t get over the jacket thing. What are the odds? It’s like one of those movies where someone gets shot in the heart, but they’re saved because the bullet hit a flask tucked into their breast pocket. I asked my friend for more details, but he said there weren’t many besides the ones he shared. Also: it turned out Nicky was all alone when it happened. Damn.

Even though it was a lie, what my Uncle said about dementia killing my father was also completely accurate. Anyone with a close family member or spouse afflicted with it will say that dementia killed them, no matter what it says on the death certificate. If my father suffered a heart attack and the doctors tried to rescue him on the operating table but found his arteries reduced to scarecrow hay, we’d still say the cause of death was dementia. If he was killed in a freak avalanche on a ski slope in Oregon, we’d still tell people he died of dementia. If he fell out a window in Brooklyn — especially if he fell out a window in Brooklyn — it would most certainly be because of his dementia.

That’s just how it goes with this disease: it takes chunks of a person’s life secretly in the night until another disease or misadventure commits the final murder. This is to say, my father was mostly gone when Covid got him. At least, that’s what I hope.

When my Uncle finished, he opened it to the rest of the room. There was a maddening silence, punctuated only by ice cubes melting inside water glasses. There were a few takers, and the memories mainly were corny stories shared by his golf and tennis buddies. But one of my father’s cousins led the ceremony to an uncomfortable place when he talked about how envious he was of all my father’s girlfriends. “Hey, he was a good-looking man!”

After he mercifully sat down, my mother nudged me, but I ignored her. “Go ahead, AJ!” yelled one of my annoying aunts. I could feel one-hundred eyes on me while I stared at the sauce-covered napkin on the chair between my legs. I felt like a little kid with a violin being forced to play.

My mother tried to goad me again. I politely, quietly told her I didn’t want to say anything. “Then why did you tell me to bring a microphone!” she said loud enough for everyone to hear. “Will you shut the fuck up!” I whispered back.

Someone else stood up and told a story about my dad I didn’t listen to. Julieanne squeezed my hand.

My sister had something prepared to say but she opted out just like I did. We had dinner together after the memorial was over and we both agreed that we felt okay staying silent. The past five years of dealing with him and my mother and both their illnesses had worn off most of our skin. But saying anything even borderline confrontational, no matter how true, would not make Al smile. And that’s fine. Neither one of us wanted to upset anyone. We read the room and we said the sanest, safest thing possible: nothing.

At dinner, I started talking about Nicky again. “Did I tell you about this? The jacket?” She nodded. I told her again anyway.

Last week my friend texted me an update that Nicky is still in the hospital, but there is a new GoFundMe page for him. It was almost $20k by the time I got to it. “Nicky is blessed to have such wonderful family and friends!”

I kicked in $100. I forgot to click on the Keep Me Anonymous box. The donor is listed as “Albert Daulerio” because that’s the name on my credit card. I’m sure Nicky has no idea that person is me.

*Not his real name.