Just Life in General – Page 5 – Angelo Bonadonna's Blog

Another Ride with the Hitchhiker

SSW for March 25, 2021

[Potential spoilers! If you’re not caught up on your Suspense episodes (as of September 2, 1942), go listen to “The Hitchhiker” first. Then come back here!]

The “drive-in” today, like last week, brought another bout with eternity, this time through Lucille Fletcher’s “The Hitchhiker,” a Suspense episode on Sirius XM’s Old Time Radio station. I saw the title as I was flipping through the stations, and I had that immediate thought: “Do I want to go there?”

I knew the story and I knew the effect. Orson Welles. The driving. The narration. The other-worldliness. The common, relatable story of a cross-country trip. The impenetrable story of crossing over—not the Brooklyn Bridge, but the breach between here and eternity. Has Orson, or Ronald Adams, as his character was named, made it to his destination yet? Is he still making that cross-country trek, picking up hitchhiking women, crashing into a field of cows? Or did he, soon after making that phone call home, succumb to the Hitchhiker’s “Hallo!” and find out “who he really was” and where he was going?

My first reflection is the moment of indecision in me to listen to the episode this morning. In a flash of a moment when I read the title on the radio display, all the thoughts above ran through my mind—one of those flashes of eternity in an instant—and I hesitated, not sure it was right, at 5:12 AM, to be entering into reflections of the sort that this story would, yet once again, arouse and confound in my mind and soul. My first thought is: this instantaneous thought process would not have been possible just a few years ago, before the time of radios that sent written messages—words denoting station and program and song titles—across a display screen. So here is how the modern world is separate from the world of the Hitchhiker, the world of September, 1942. Yet, as I listened, my dominant thought was how unchanged our worlds are: a mother saying goodbye to her son getting in his car on a journey. And indeed, there’s so much about the journey and the situation that is unchanged: the sound of the engine accelerating, the highway sights, the roadside cafes, the radio, and the narrator’s drifty and precise observations as he makes his way over monotonous terrain and terrifying preoccupations in his mind. This does sound a lot like my morning commute.

The difference/similarity between 1942 and 2021—the driving, the moment in time, the eternity—is one of those recurrent themes, those instantaneous flashes of big meaning, that appear in my mind, time and again as I make my way through the story. I can’t help feeling I’m somehow with Ronald: we’re both driving; we’re both terrified; we’re both talking our way through somehow (and sometimes, alas, with aggressive thoughts, though mine don’t verge, fortunately, into contemplations of murder, as Ronald’s do, in his time of greatest crisis). My car is very different from his—I with my radio-messaging-display and quiet electric motor—he, with his internal combustion engine and manual transmission accelerating through all the gears. But the internal combustion engine is still in the forefront of my mind: it’s what I think of when I think of cars and highways. Everything about his trip stimulates feelings of familiarity and hominess. His reflection of his mother at the end brings quiet hope and familiar images. He’s read somewhere that “Love can conquer demons,” and he pictures his mom in her “crisp house dress” (that moms wore in the 40s, 50s, and 60s when we were young, when we needed our moms so, when there was such comfort there—both otherworldly and oh so simple and understandable).

Ronald drives, endlessly it seems, across so many regions of our country, with many descriptive details evoking the grandeur and monotony familiar to anyone who has gone on a road trip. It isn’t until he is in a surreal part of the great American Southwest, in New Mexico, with its “lunar” landscape and barren and sublime mountains and prairies and mesas, that he decides to make the phone call. We get the operator, speaking operator-speak, something none of us have heard these many years, yet still so familiar. Ronald has to request “Long distance”—as indeed there was a time, long ago, when local and long distance were different services needing different operators who had to talk to each other—and, essentially, “build” or link a connection across a network or series of networks to reach a place really far away. Ronald was attempting to reach a place far away—but not just physically far. Wherever Ronald was—and it wasn’t New Mexico—he was connecting to Brooklyn, and he did get connected—to his confusion and woe.

But I get ahead of myself. That call, with all the operators, and the coins falling in the slot with the familiar ding, so perfectly inhabited that space between the familiar and the surreal. While the new technologies of electric cars and radio displays did not essentially change the experience of driving and all its attendant fears and possibilities and routines, the new technology of the cell phone, once again, has made narrative drama and suspense all the more difficult for writers. I forgot how dramatic a pay phone could be! Ronald’s call was expensive, even by 2021 standards: $3.85, to be deposited in coins, one at a time: 15 quarters and one dime. We hear each one fall—but not only that, there are instructions from the operator: “After you deposit $1.50, please wait. When I have collected the money, you may deposit the next $1.50.” So, we hear the six coins fall—and the suspense builds through this most quotidian of processes. The operator collects and gives permission to continue. Six more coins, six more dings. Then the final four coins—and that most familiar and most shocking of phone calls.

The story ends, and I have to shut off the radio before there is any disruption to the mood of fear and worry over the eternity—or end—of Ronald’s fate. But I recover soon, as it occurs to me that perhaps Greg Bell has some provocative notes on the story. So I turn the radio back on, and it comes on right away, since radios nowadays no longer use tubes that need to warm up—and it’s Orson Welles I hear. He’s talking about the war effort … in a most visual way that would require its own essay to depict. He pronounces the first syllable of “Nazi” as though it were “gnat” (gnat-zi)—a pronunciation I haven’t heard before. So, the thematic mixture of familiar/other (or different)-worldly continues. Welles is encouraging people to buy war bonds—to lend Uncle Sam 10 cents on the dollar … possibly through a payroll savings plan. He has much to say about it, with a fine statement about the preferability of US bonds over Nazi or Axis bonds—on our wrists. So we’re right there, in September of 1942, just about 10 months into this war, with such a long way to go, an eternity, but still the movement from Brooklyn to New Mexico, and ordinary life and transitions to eternity are happening at home, on the radio, as though no war ever disrupted and took over life as we know it.

The Hitchhiker—strange and right there (always appearing, always surprising)—is a moment in time, and a forever, out of time. Greg Bell comes on and reminds us of Lucille Fletcher’s stature as a suspense writer (she of “Sorry, Wrong Number” fame). I think of her relationship (wife) to the great musical composer of Suspense, Bernard Herrmann, who was, it so happens, the musical composer for tonight’s episode. Fletcher, we learn, wrote the Hitchhiker specifically for Orson Welles, and sure enough, Orson Welles, put his usual genius right there and made it become what it needed to become: a piece of terrifying moment in time, across time, repeatedly casting us into the familiar, made just unfamiliar enough. Ronald describes it when he is traversing New Mexico, near the end. In his loneliness, he looks out on the gloomy landscape and his movement across that country, which he pictures in terms of the indifference of a fly walking across the face of the moon. And then he calls his mom.

Water on Mars, Marcus Tullius Cicero, and Nancy Sinatra

SSW for March 18, 2021

And now Part 2 of this semester’s notebook begins. I reflect: the process is becoming more a “thing,” certainly for me personally: I’m doing what I ask my students to do: think all week about possible topics; plan for a good session; start early so I have momentum; try not to think too much about specific lines of possible development—so as not to forget them by “writing” them (in water, like John Keats’s name); try to keep open to the late discovery of a topic; try to let the discovery energize me; try to get some work done that needs getting done; try to find the meaning in life, as in “what, really, needs to be done?”

I’m still facing the abyss, looking into eternity … trying to make sense of it all … trying to make sense of this single moment in time. I read in the news about water on Mars—there was a lot of it, apparently, but we’re talking about 3 billion years ago. That’s literally something that some scientists have said: Mars was such and such 3 billion years ago (but now all that water has gone somewhere—in the rocks below the surface? Into outer space?). Three billion years ago: That’s so long before any of my three topics of today: vaccine purgatory, Nancy Sinatra, and really going back, Cicero, who, ancient as he is, still is not all that close to even one billion years ago. All these billions of years bang against the limits of my comprehension and imagination, kinda like the trillions of dollars being spent so lavishly and stingily and carefully and crudely in President Biden’s Coronavirus stimulus package. I think of Terry’s comment about how he conceives of amounts like that: he can’t. So, it has no meaning. And we’re probably all in Terry’s boat, as we throw up our hands at the seas of thousands and millions and billions and trillions, and figure it must all work out somehow—whether it’s through making things up (printing money? declaring victory and moving on? Imploding in insolvency?) or just hoping for the best.

My three topics cover some range: the news of the day, the heartstrings of a daughter’s devotion; the connections to eternity and fleeting urgency and eternal resonance—if disguised in continuing preoccupations that have no hope of permanence, despite how persistent they’ve been in continuing on. As for this last, I’m thinking of Cicero, who both seems so relevant and so completely gone from existence.

A good starting point—a theme of my notebooks lately—is the “drive in”: I drive in on Cicero Ave., so Cicero the man is “right there”—kinda—living on, despite the avenue having nothing really Ciceronian about it. It’s large, I suppose, like the man. I can’t stop thinking of Cicero’s mortality: He was 63 when he died, my age, and he had accomplished so much. How can not every human relate to Cicero? He was given privilege at the start of his life born into the “middle class”; he had family he loved (Brother Quintus in De Oratore); he achieved greatness in oratory, law, and politics. And he died before his time—because he was so important. He had to be murdered. So, he never had the chance of fading away, becoming irrelevant and forgotten. I remember you, Cicero; I read your treatise of “oratory”—one of many you wrote on that topic, and I can see your development in theory, your love of your brother, your admiration for your mentor, Crassus, your nostalgia for an earlier, happier time. I think of the reflective, “end of life” tone of De Oratore, a book written while you were in your mid-fifties—still a man with a lot of living left, but nonetheless, a man who was looking back, looking to teach, looking to create a dialogue of friendly and different voices trying to figure out just what is it about persuasion, performance, public life, responsibility, exploitation, strategy—all the stuff that goes into, surrounds, comes out of effective, responsible, service-oriented speech? I feel you right here, in my mind, Cicero. Yet, I also feel those nagging questions: Why all this effort? Why are we remembering you? Why did you have to be killed, after such a valuable life, at a point in your life when retirement beckoned, with those pursuits away from the forum and Senate—the reading, and math, and music, and leisure you talked about in De Oratore?

Maybe my sadness in reading you this year is my connection to you, at age 63 this year—this pandemic year, when thoughts of mortality are heavy in the air each day, despite me being almost one week into my post first-dose vaccination. Yesterday’s front page Tribune story was about people my age—or a tad older: the 64-year-olds who were too young to be in that over-65 1a group, first to be vaccinated, but who, as folk approaching their mid-60s, were also in a somewhat increased risk group because of age. The article spoke of the state of “vaccine purgatory” some people this age felt—both too young and too old, kinda neglected or not taken care of, as they wait their turn for a vaccine. But who, at whatever age, does not think this way? We are all in purgatory—waiting, uneasy, unsettled. For though we may have led full lives—who knows? Will some Mark Antony put the hit on us?

The article spoke of a couple who had retired last year. The man pictured and his wife were enjoying their retirement, but yet there was this cloud over them. Was it the fear of pestilence and death that was afflicting people like them all over the world, and no place worse than right here in America? It could be. The Page 1 picture was flattering—I looked at that 64-year-old, and thought: Yes, he’s got some miles left on him. If I didn’t know this was a story about his age, I wouldn’t have thought of his age. He had a smile, not too many wrinkles, some hair on top, not too thin and not totally snowy. He looked good—happy—ready for the good life. I thought: how am I looking? In some ways, I’m at my best; I certainly, as I’ve often said, don’t feel any different from when I was 18…. But I am different … by some 45 years. I didn’t have to wait, by the way, for my vaccine—such being the benefits of the hypertension and diabetes that my 45-years-post-18 have brought. So, I’ve acquired issues—but I don’t feel them. I feel connected and disconnected to the man in the paper, and I wonder how Cicero would have felt to be 63 in 2021, and part of me thinks he would have been just the same, and that’s a comfort.

The warmest comfort in this drama of “grasping at something that lasts” in the midst of disappearing-water-on Mars after billions of years, comes, however, with the melancholy confirmation today, on the ride in down Cicero Ave., that Nancy Sinatra, after 14 years of being “Nancy for Frank,” will be airing her final show this Sunday—thus, closing off a significant portion of her life, and concluding this picture she has created of … what? A daughter’s love? A music expert’s analysis? An insider’s look at the context behind the art?

I was so surprised at how touched I’ve been by her show these many years. Have I been an XM customer that long? My first satellite radio predates “Nancy for Frank”; it even predates “Siriusly Sinatra,” as the station was called “Frank’s Place” back then. The station has evolved over the years and across the name change—with all of the changes improvements, with one exception (where are you, O, Jonathan Schwartz?). Nancy’s tenure doesn’t seem to be situated in time: she exists, reflecting “Sinatra,” always there, as indeed she has always been. The first child, the inspiration for Phil Silvers, the daughter, the sister, who, during her tenure on the station had to say goodbye to her brother and mother—sic transit gloria mundi—losses we all felt as family, because that’s what happened in this tenure: we became family. Nancy was herself always, and that honesty made it so easy to be with her. She didn’t need to argue a case for her father, but she lived that case so naturally and lovingly. I’ll leave to others to characterize the art of her programming, but it was artful—playing whole albums, always with attributions and stories, geeking out with Chuck Granata, signing off with “sleep warm Poppa; sleep warm, Frank….”

At first (has it really been 14 years??) it didn’t seem like Nancy—or like her voice. Such a singer she was, and such an alluring young woman—of course, in those boots. I always thought of her with that power—walking (that’s what they were made for, you see) but not only that, but walking over something, on to something. But this Nancy, with Frank, seemed to have gotten someplace—and that place was one of appreciation, love—and scholarship. I found so much more to appreciate in Frank Sinatra through the person he was through the person Nancy is. Such a gift she’s given us, in so many layers and in such beauty. We have the music—her father’s and hers, yes, and we have the context of family and memories and other artists and easy humility and pride about it, because that’s the easy truth of it. Rest well, Nancy. No sleep yet, okay? But warmth, yes.

Thoughts on the release of the Angelo documentary revision and the 10-year anniversary

Gen and Moira’s revised documentary on their brother, Angelo, has been posted! It’s here! And it reminds me:

Angelo was a new entity, the likes of which the universe, in all its miraculous and endless diversity, had never yet experienced prior to his existence.

In combining the genres of home movie and documentary, Genevieve and Moira have given our family a reminder, and the world a fresh glimpse, of that “new entity.” They’ve done so with grace and generosity, and we (his family and friends and yes, the universe) owe them a debt of gratitude.

Angelo had characteristic gestures that were uniquely his. But he also had the most common of all things—a charming smile, for example. Some of his better qualities should have come with a warning label. His smile, for instance, was so expansive and so charming that you had best learn to mistrust it at some point, or he would find some way to put you in an impossible bind (usually involving bungee cords). He was common and unique, but most of all, as one interviewee says (wink), “he was sweet.” His story is compelling and intriguing, as you might imagine when a young, charismatic, socially-conscious, world traveler and raconteur dies unexpectedly.

But this project was done by Gen and Moira as a simple gesture of love—for their brother, for their parents. Over the years since its first release in 2013, Gen stayed with the project, and nurtured it and its possibilities—which have ever been growing, and in different directions, in the background of her evolution as a filmmaker. Her commitment has been gentle—the best kind of long-view living-with her art and memories and care for her family.

I look at the evolution of this documentary and I’m reminded of the value of effort, commitment, process, patience—and yes, grief and love and affection—and sibling privilege, obligation, and commitment, and love of parents….

I look at this documentary, and I think of all the clips—where did they come from? I think of the “new” audio interview with Moira at age 6; of the “new” clips from the original interviews; of the new clips from the new interviews, and yes, from a technical point of view, I think of all the frame-by-frame editing, the color grading, audio normalizing, captioning, and organization and re-organization. I think of a story about a girl named Lucky, and how did that make it in?

Angelo was a new entity that the universe in all its diversity had yet to experience until 1986-2011. But the lesson I learn most from this documentary is that, special as he was, Angelo was but an example of the humanity that is all around us every day—that humanity that is so fragile and evanescent and moved on from, and, worst of all at times, ignored and discarded in our crass and dangerous and neglectful world. Angelo has now been gone 10 years, and also not at all. We’re just lucky enough to have a documentarian, an archivist, a “sweet remembrancer” as the Bard would have it (in the words of one of his more crass tragic heroes), who keeps him coming back at us, in different angles and moments, all with a universe of insight into that new entity that he once was, and still is, in and beyond these fleeting clips, pictures, and comments.

No explanation is needed of Angelo to those who knew him. He’s right there in our memories, animated in the full explosiveness of song and dance and eating and arguing and smiling. But to those who didn’t know him, they can catch glimpses of him through this documentary—and in ways that will make you feel the loss many of us have been struggling with and turning the corner from—with success and failure, and smiles and tears, and hope and love.

Watch—and try not to miss him. Thank you for that, Gen and Moira!

The Day After February 5 [2020]

[ Note: This entry is a companion SSW (silent sustained writing) to the previous posting two weeks earlier.]

February 6, 2020

Is there such a thing as a grief hangover? Is the whole thing a hangover? Two weeks ago, on Ang’s birthday, I wrote that I had to power through to February 5, and then start breathing again. Today is February 6, and I’m breathing, but it’s a bit labored and troubled. I was thinking about the “getting through” or “getting to”—but not the “getting beyond.” What does February 6 and beyond look like?

I think such things because today had such prominent features to it—a mixture of (1) the world in your face (snow day in February) and (2) entrenched defiance on my part not to let the world interrupt who I was, and wanted to be, and what I wanted to do today. I’ve fallen into a solitary morning routine the past year or so, and, like an old cranky person, I’ve grown protective of it. I wake up early, stay off the computer (the only time of the day that’s true), and I engage in an increasingly regular ritual of getting ready. I make lunches; I brew coffee with the French press; I leave a full thermos for the girls to have when their day starts hours later; I clean up the night’s dishes and run the dishwasher, hoping to earn some credit (and to help the kids avoid censure for the mess they left); I put on WFMT, and find accompaniment in the soft tones of both the music and the through-the-night announcer; I shower; I dress, my clothes having been laid out the night before (another old-person tendency creeping up on me—way over-preparedness about trivial things, obsessiveness in procedures); I look through the house to see what the others will wake up to, and I try to smooth out what could disturb or inconvenience them.

Today was just another one of these mornings, but everything was amped up, all these tendencies put on steroids. First, I woke up way early. Was it the worry over the weather? I wish I could say it was, but the truth is I’ve been waking up earlier and earlier—to such an extent that I wonder if I sleep at all at night. It’s become just another brief nap—that I, of course, need more of, since I’m not sleeping at night. Is it the January-February grief cycle that’s disturbing my sleep? Maybe. I think it’s more the grief I feel over my broken heart of life at SXU—the stress of committee and department work, the inability to hit the stride of making things work, finding the truth, living our mission, bonding with colleagues, transitioning out of past roles, and on and on.

The morning routine has been a kind of retreat for me into my own solitary peace. I’ve felt so alone—whatever the cause—be it Angelo or the sorrows of SXU—and I’ve found comfort in the quiet and regularity and interiority of computerless/deviceless domestic procedures, followed by the zoned out, but purposeful drive in, with minimal traffic (so important to beat the traffic, and my earlier and earlier start to the day was motivated by a quest to find that time that was early enough to beat the rat race. I’m not sure I found it, but I know it’s before 4:55 AM. At some point I’m going to begin hitting up against the prior day’s late traffic rather than this day’s early traffic).

So this morning—out of a desire to protect the routine, which was threatened by the snow, and to increase the psychological medicine of “being of domestic service” to help the family get started on their days, and to lean in a bit hard to the “man of the house” father stereotype (but in a good way?), I woke up an hour early, not planning to do all I did, but just falling into it. I decided to unbury three cars, get them started and warmed up (not that they’d stay warm, but so that the windows could all be cleared, at least for the time being). Loretta’s car had a broken scraper, so I switched that out with mine. That was hard to do, since mine is like the most luxurious, most functional scraper-brush on the market. But I felt so proud to surprise her, and so proud of my sacrifice, which seemed to say, “I will do anything for you, dear. (Yes, even this.)”

This morning, in some kind of productive frenzy, I even turned on the computer before going out to dig out the cars. I thought, “I could start the cars, brush them off a bit, leave them on, come back in the house and read a report, then go back out and finish up the cars.” I was moving—and I wanted to get ready for SSW, about which I had changed my mind several times (write about grief? write about SXU’s troubles? write about this afternoon’s committee meeting and our lost way?).

It was later when I got in the car and started driving that I realized what was going on with all my productiveness that morning. A song came on—as it often does—and a miracle of emotion and utter stopping of what was going on, and a transport to the Other Place (where you needed to be all along) takes place.

I came to realize there might be something wrong with my morning routine, that I might be escaping from life, withdrawing inward, trying to control the uncontrollable, trying to secure some inner peace—but maybe leaning in too far with it.

I have an image from long ago of me wiping the kitchen counter in a circular, repetitive motion, in a Zen-like way, while the kids, all five of them, when they were young, were in the other room, being joyful and crazy and annoying and impossible. My wiping motion was control: “I’ve pushed back the forest, and this space is mine, and it’s clean, and it’s regular, and look, it’s clean…and round and round, it’s clean, see…? Peace.” There in the kitchen was my little clearing of counter—and the radio or little under-the-cabinet mounted TV with the ballgame on, quietly providing other context, giving me the illusion of not complete escape into the interiority of my own circles and clean space…: “I am still connected (and how could I not be, with those five dervishes of energy, just in the other room, bursting with so much growth and drama and other reality?).”

So much of my dream in life has been the quest for such peace, and I wonder if my current morning routine—justified in this way, is still just a little too much. Am I out of balance? Did the growing of the kids, and their movement into other rooms, farther away, allow me to fixate too much on my circles?

Yesterday we had Ang’s godparents and his cousin Jane and her husband and three dervishes of kids over to have a celebration of Ang. I’m grateful for the bustle of life in such an event. Loretta’s day in the setup was nonstop—a full day beginning with a work out, Mass, a trip to the cemetery, shopping at Costco, shopping at Jewel, going to Freddies (yes, Freddies) to pick up the chicken parmesan, gnocchi, lasagna, ravioli, meatballs, and salads. I am grateful for the way the kids all chipped in, the way everyone came over, the conversation, laughter, storytelling, and reminiscing. I was a happy and sociable participant in the gathering—but also a little quiet and off to the side. Was I thinking about my morning routine, that was just a few hours away? I was a bit.

Was I feeling the grief hangover then? Was the hangover the result of the social interaction or the intense inner withdrawals and worries over getting things done?

One big lesson I learned from Ang was that “we’re not in control”—and a version of that lesson came home to me when the song came on. Without planning, without setup, the transport took place. It was Bing Crosby and Grace Kelly in a duet of “True Love,” from the movie High Society (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fl5EPEzukNQ).

When the song came on so many of my prior—and unperceived—anxieties and preparations became apparent. I had been stressing out about how to honor this 9-year anniversary; maybe I would write about random and brief Ang memories in SSW (the stoplight at 58th Avenue that starts up a conversation with him every day?); maybe I would focus on the gratitude I felt for the text message from Lorenzo, “thinking of you today”; maybe I would write about SXU’s leadership, and how they are pulling the rug from so many supports that have enabled SXU to grow and be strong over the years—i.e., maybe I would not write at all about Ang, because it’s just too hard, too involved—next year will be the year, that ten-year mark, and my “tenure” in grief will have been earned, and then the turning point.

The song brought Bing Crosby’s silky smooth baritone that alone in itself is miraculous. But the duet is with Grace Kelly, who is more than “royal”—what is Grace Kelly? Magic is too harsh a word; there’s something softer, more beautiful, more transient and eternal, hopeful, and absolute about her, or the symbol of her. Together they sang:

For you and I have a guardian angel
On high with nothing to do
But to give to you
And to give to me
Love forever true.

It’s romantic love they’re singing of—but it’s another kind of love, too. The love of a protector. Is Ang the guardian angel? Or is there a guardian angel unseen keeping him close to me? The words and feelings of these lyrics swell up and fill me. Time, leisure, love, protection, generosity, sharing, and eternity: Bing and Grace sing it, and I drive on snowy streets without a word from Ang these long nine years, but with a guardian angel’s efforts, breaking through, giving me a forever that might be, maybe?, redeemed.

October 23, 2019

Yesterday we buried Uncle John, age 90, the last of the Bonadonnas, at least his generation. In the five days since he died, my reactions have run the gamut, so it’s time to take stock:

Every family needs a Genevieve, an archivist, an artist, a family-loving soul. It’s nice to have all these rolled into a single person.
I feel oddly connected to John. He was both inside and outside our insane Bonadonna family. I don’t take it lightly that he changed his name (to Bonadona). His identity needed a new name. I have often felt both inside and outside my own family (i.e., the family I grew up in, not my current family). Yesterday the topic of smoking came up: why hadn’t I started when everyone else had? That’s a simple point of divergence for me, but there are many. John had his divergences too, but there he was in the thick of it. I think of John tending bar as a twelve-year-old, carding people older than him, staying up till 4-5 AM (“we had a late license”)—being “a part of” the family, but also being “apart of” the family—always being a team player, going along with it, but also finding ways to run away and be on his own. He was the younger brother, the “punk” who my father, three years older, told to “go away.” John’s mixture of greatness, apartness/a partness, of solidarity, resonates with me. My choice to separate myself from my family, like John’s I imagine, was not a conscious or deliberate decision. John was handsome and charismatic—more so than me, but I have been handsome in moments, mostly as a baby, but that still counts (as an adult, John was tall, I am not). His charm and charisma had to give him confidence and effectiveness. In snatches in my life, maybe more with my education than my physical presence, I’ve felt the kind of confidence that I like to believe was behind much of John’s distinctive approach and demeanor. But with both of us there was this other side, a self-effacing humility, an honesty about limitations, and an unafraid directness in confronting and talking about those weaknesses. In the video, John talks about his nature as a student (“I was not studious”). He says he doesn’t think he graduated high school, and I believe him when he expresses uncertainty. That tentativeness about his graduation (surely he knew, any onlooker would say) was not done out of self-protection; he probably was genuinely uncertain. It didn’t matter all that much to him, but it kinda did too. He had a way of presenting the truth just as it was, without a lot of packaging. The truth was enough.
Each one of his stories opened a universe of personality, history, culture, time and place.
His close brush with murder, or attempted murder, shows what a border creature he was. His laughter in saying, “Who’s going to see this?” as he proceeded to tell the story of his adventures or misadventures of being a landlord revealed his openness, his pragmatism, his realness, his connectedness to actual life functions and purposes—and his filter that kept him balanced and out of jail.
His eulogy by his neighbor was a kind of perfection and a sad sign of absence. Others felt a need for a more personal or familial touch here. But John was loved where he lived, and he lived a lot of his life on that street. We thought so much about why more family were not involved in the funeral, the eulogizing, the whole saying of farewell? Why hadn’t we as a family been close all those many years—John’s 90, or our 60-plus? Sarafina hit the nail on the head when she summarized the “I don’t want to put you out” motive. I don’t want to put you out, so I won’t tell you my wife died and we had a funeral for her. I don’t want to put you out by inviting you to parties. I don’t want to put you out by calling you and having a relationship with you. There was that. But then there was the time John was with you, and he would talk—about anything, without guile or packaging or spin. He was with you in the moment, and his life was a kind of unfolding event that, when you participated, you got all of him, but when you weren’t around, you weren’t all that much in existence. I’ve come to view this approach as genuinely respecting the transient moment of time we all inhabit: why record, why build, why strive toward this greater thing? Just be. Be right now, with the people around you, and when those people change, be with the new people, with just as much of all of you as there was in the prior group. In a way, the ideal is Dory in Finding Nemo, encountering the world in the moment, and with added benefits of joy, surprise, and all-in-ness as you enter into new moments.
In the car, in the spaces between funeral home and cemetery and restaurant, there were reflections about boys v. girls as children—how the women kept a family together, and surely that was a part of the whole dynamic. (But the women in his life kept moving on to the other side way too prematurely.)
The neighbor’s eulogy captured moments of John when he was just “being” at home, being a person, being with people. John’s core was one of generosity, and goodness—no agendas, no real push towards self-interested goals. He was once called the Mayor of Palatine (the street he lived on), and he did own the block.
So many of us need to watch and share reactions to the videos that Gen created. “An afternoon with John Bonadona.” The conversations started, hinted at, completed, left incomplete. On that day, I grew to know John as a story-teller, as a rich, complex person, so confident and easy-going. His willingness to hold forth was generous and kind. Then there’s Gen’s picture. I resist the glorification of Mob culture that is inescapable when you’re a fan of the great storytelling of The Godfather, The Sopranos, Good Fellas, and the like. But I’ll make this exception: Don John Bonadona on the couch surrounded by his family—that’s a splendid mob boss photo, if ever there was one.
Hearing him talk of his days in the army, in school, on vacation, in Cuba, on the job—all of it, brought me back to the texture and rhythm and way of life of the 1950s, 60s, 70s and more—some of which I had direct contact with and, in a grimy way, welcomed back into living memory. He grew up during the Depression, and all those other things that happened in the 20^th century. Some of the stories, particularly about school, about being a cook in the army, and about avoiding active duty, might invite criticism. But you listened to these narratives and you couldn’t help feeling you knew the man, you were the man. Maybe that’s part of my connection to him—his everyman aura.
He suffered unspeakable loss—at every point in his life, losing all the women he loved and lived with—beginning with his sister in her mid-twenties, his daughter at a much younger age, his first wife at too young an age, his mother at an advanced age, and his second wife at too early a time for separation. He smiled and worked hard. He smoked till the end. And he was really handsome in the casket. So what’s wrong here?
His life was full, and by all measures, complete: I should exhale and recognize he did it the right way and was not cheated. In seeing him go, I can say that I’m not overwhelmed with sadness—other than to think that, in so perfect a life and so correct an approach to time, this long span of 90 years, it still feels wrong that he should have to go away. He did have more cigarettes to smoke, more stories to tell, more stories to live.