Tuesday, March 3, 2015

What a long strange trip it has been...
 Barry died 2 weeks ago..marking the end of an era in my life. ....it was a surreal experience to spend time with his family and old friends after so many years of estrangement..
 I have actually  been feeling somewhat melancholy lately since Gabe and I did the STORY CORP interview in January....and all those memories came flooding into me at the funeral home
 My heart is broken again. I have lost the 2 most significant men in my life besides my Dad .and my Sons have lost their Father ...
  In my nostalgia I am remembering a robust Barry, defiant and rough.....we were still children when we met....even though we thought we knew everything  there was to know..He was 21 and I was 18 when we  got married. Neither of us had a direction or any encouragement to advance and i guess we were just grateful that we found one another at that particular moment.
We loved each other.... wasn't that enough? Also my best friend recently had "had" to get married and it seemed to be the way to go in my romantic mind.
Barry had that James Dean attitude and look about him...at one point we had 2 motorcycles and a car and I had not yet learned how to drive,
When he finally got a decent paying job at Coca Cola through my BF's father he somehow managed  mess that up....walking out without notice because the Union failed to pass....only thinking of himself and not as  a married man..
 Yet he was the same person who put love notes in my lunch when he packed it...and came and picked me up I had finished my shift at BIG BOY restaurant to take me to see DR ZHIVAGO even though he had just left the theater.....a 4 hour movie....and was always showing me new places/things I had never experienced.
 When we were "evicted" from our apartment on Mary Ave  and relocated in Hillendale we were inundated with roaches...he put on a faux fur hat I had...looked like something  that Papa John Phillips had worn,  and declared war on the roaches....this was of course around the time of Sgt Pepper....
We had a lot of fun , saw a lot of movies , met some great people and stayed together for 14 years but after the kids arrived I was looking for more stability and responsibility ....I continued to grow and Barry was just stuck or stoned in his own reality of life.
 Pot was good for him because it made him mellow...alcohol made him abusive and sometimes violent..He had a good ear for music and really missed his calling there.
 He lived like a gypsy after we split up ... pre cell phones and no permanent address.
 I needed to contact him when Zak became ill,so I drove up and down Broadway looking for him. Luckily the first man I stopped and asked told me that he was in his apartment. I warily followed him into the building thinking i was going to be attacked, raped and left for dead...but there was Barry in the living room . The man was his friend Bruce, a former psychiatric nurse (and patient)
 From that point on we kept in touch,
  It was truly a blessing when Barry met Sheryl. He definitely need someone in his life to love  and be be loved by. She became a part of our family as well and it was painful and sad when she became ill and died.
 Sheryl and Barry came to my Wedding to Jim....he spent time here in my house after she was gone...Jim and he were friends and now they are both gone...../

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