20 Years Goes By Way Too Fast

It's hard to believe that 20 years has gone by since my mother passed away. One thing is for sure, the years have gone by like days and the days, like seconds.
So much has happened since December 14,1996 that I don't even know where to begin to tell the stories about everything. Some good, some not so good. But as Darius Rucker sang about, "it all brought me to this."

I started on WYRK in the spring of that year. It was May of 1996 that I went on the air for the first time as a part time host on the weekends. The day that my mom passed away I was headed to the station to do a Saturday morning show. I got the call from my brother, who told me to get to South Buffalo Mercy as soon as I could.
By the time I had gotten to the hospital, it was too late. Mom had passed.
I guess I have carried around some guilt all these years that I wasn't there at the moment she died. I never really expected her to die. At 19 years old, I guess I had some sort of ignorance to how sick my mother really was.

In the first 5 years after mom was gone, I graduated from Canisius College, got married, got divorced and became the host of the WYRK morning show. In the 15 years following that, I moved over ten times around Western New York and finally settled down and started a family.

Looking back and writing this as I watch our 6 month old son play, I hope to have the same impact on his life as my parents had on mine.

It was 15 years after mom died that my father passed away. A brilliant man to say the least. As is normal with sons and daughters, I realize now what my father meant by some of the things that he taught us. Two words; budget and plan.

Having to care for and provide for 5 kids with one salary seems nearly impossible to me. Somehow my father made it work. It wasn't until a few years before he died that my father and I really started to see eye to eye and I was happy to have him as my friend as well as my dad.

We buried mom the week before Christmas. It was tough that year and the years following to get in to the spirit of Christmas. It was just one of those things that I rushed towards and hurried through and never gave much thought to. It wasn't like it used to be. Christmas was always so special and so important at our home in East Aurora. I still can't figure out how all seven of us got along so well in such a small home and to this day, I don't know how we all had gifts to open and never seemed to go without.

20 years certainly does go by fast. If you ask most of the people close to me they'll tell you that I rarely sat down to enjoy it. It seems I have always been on the go or doing something, anything but sit still. In the last 20 years great people have come in to my life and some have passed on. I have had the honor of delivering three eulogies for some very special people. Each time, trying to find the right words to summarize how amazing their lives were and what they left behind for us as family and friends.

But the words that were said at my mother's funeral, about her, have been on my mind lately. Fr Walt (currently the pastor at All Saints in Lockport) delivered the brief, yet powerful eulogy that December morning at Immaculate Conception Church. My mother was a simple woman who rarely left our house and whose life and hobbies were all about us; her kids and family.

Looking back, my dad did everything he could to provide us with the things we needed like housing, clothing, food etc. At the same time, my mother was working hard to give us the basic understanding of what is most important.