A Post From Gina - March 30, 2011

I have sat at the computer many times lately, and I've pecked at the keys, but it all winds up in the unfinished draft folder. Over the course of my blog-writing, I've asked Gina if there was anything that she would like to add but she would hesitate and then decline. Last evening, she asked if I would post something that she wrote about Pete and I responded with an emphatic, "Of course!", so here is what she wrote:



Gina and Pete, June 2010



This weekend, I will be chaperoning and walking with a group of ten students from my high school at the American Cancer Society's Relay for Life, something I did last year to help out their then-advisor who has two young children and couldn't spend the night with them. Last spring, Pete was well into his treatment and was doing well, but it was an emotional night nonetheless. Only a few months later, my husband Doug and I flew to New Jersey for a visit and spent an incredible day with Pete at Six Flags Great Adventure - a way for the three of us to spend some time together since Pete was still working on his boat. At the time, I was filled with hope for Pete's recovery and looking forward to getting out on his boat with him this summer. Last June, his goatee was thick, his spirits were high, and his smile was big. This year's Relay, I know, is going to be one thousand times more difficult and emotional because Pete's picture is going to be in the slideshow, one of cancer's many victims.

I've been trying for a while now to find the right words to say about Pete, but it's been hard. My mom often talked about the first time I ever met Pete, 36 years ago when he came home from the hospital. Apparently, I thought he was a doll - until he started crying, that is - and apparently I was pretty upset about losing my role as the only child. Fast forward 36 years and now I am, once again, the only child. The difference is that now I would do anything to have my baby brother back again.

Pete and I had our ups and downs as any siblings would. There was quite a bit of torture during our elementary and middle school years and into high school. Then, when I was 17 and Pete was 16, a mutual friend was killed in a horrific car accident. That moment changed our relationship forever. We had lost two grandparents by then, but this was different. Kenny was our age, and that forced us to reexamine our lives and our relationship. We became closer than close. In my senior yearbook, Pete paid for a message to me that read "Congratulations, my sister my best friend." There were many visits where he came to see me at college with his friend Dave, a case of MGD, and a bottle of Absolut. How my 18-year-old brother got the beer and vodka, I have no idea, but we had some interesting nights! The following year, we alternated. I would go down to see him and Dave and my friend Sherri at Stockton, and he'd come up to Trenton State. After I graduated and returned home, we lived together while my mom moved in with our grandmother to care for her. A few years later, I moved to California, leaving our home to Pete and a rotating group of his friends.

Nancy and Pete in Las Vegas

Being so far away was hard, but I always looked forward to visiting in the summer because I got to spend time with Pete on his boat. He came out to California several times. First with my cat, then with his girlfriend Nancy, which is when I took my very first trip to Vegas. We did Vegas in one day - a 3-1/2 hour drive up in his rented convertible, followed by hours of open-mouthed fascination at the sights, gambling, eating, and a 3-1/2 hour drive home. I remember that Pete had planned on driving home, but I insisted. At the time, I was still a journalist, and I knew that almost every weekend our newspaper reported fatalities on the 15, a long and mind-numbing stretch of desert highway. Pete was pretty ticked that I didn't trust him to drive, but by the time we reached State Line a half hour later, he was already asleep, and around 2 a.m., I had gotten my baby brother and Nancy home safely, just like I promised. His last visit was a few years ago, before the diagnosis. He installed ceiling fans in our house and took a very disappointing fishing trip out of Dana Point. Pete really couldn't understand how I liked living out here, given the smog, the traffic, and most of all, the woefully disastrous fishing.

Pete and Gina at Gina's wedding

A few months after I moved to California, our grandmother died. We were both sad, but I also felt a tremendous sense of peace. Only days before she died, I had talked to her on the phone and told her how much I loved her. I had no regrets. There was relief that after several years of declining health, she was no longer in pain, faith that she would be reunited with our grandfather, her husband of 65 years, and joy that she had lived a full life. Losing Pete has been anything but joyful. There is the relief that he's no longer in pain and the sarcoma is no longer running his life, but there has been an overwhelming sense of grief that is unlike anything I've ever felt before. Nothing - not my grandparents' deaths, not my parents' divorce, not the loss of several pets, not my struggle with infertility - has hit me as profoundly as Pete's passing. I realized today that I'm grieving for myself as well as for Pete. My grief is because I will never again see my brother, my closest ally and partner in crime. My grief is also for all of Pete's unrealized dreams, the unreached goals, the unfulfilled potential. I'm sure Pete wouldn't want that. He was never one to throw himself a pity party. Nancy spent a few hours with him a few weeks before he died, and she told me that his concerns were not for himself, but for his family and friends, and that is so like him to put others first.

People often ask me how I'm doing, and I always tell them the same thing. I'm ok. I'm hanging in there. I have good days and I have rough days. The truth is I am ok. I am hanging in there. I do have good days and I have rough days. But I also miss Pete more than I can express. I think about him every day. I wonder all the time if he knew how much I loved him. I wonder if he could hear me tell him that the last few days of his life when he was unconscious from the pain medication, increased in dosage to manage the excruciating pain from the tumors in his brain. I wonder if he's in heaven, if I'll ever see him again, if I'll have an experience as some of his friends have had, or receive a sign that he's found his way and he's ok.

2010 Luminary

I know I'm going to cry at Relay when I see Pete's picture in the slideshow, and I'm going to cry when I pass his Luminary, and I'm going to cry when the solo bagpiper marches onto the field - symbolizing the people who come into our lives - and when the sound of his bagpipe fades into the night - symbolizing those who have left. But I'm also going to try to focus on the positive. This weekend, I'm walking for Pete, but I'm not just walking in his memory. I believe that if Pete were still here, he would walk so that others could have a chance to realize their dreams, reach their goals, and fulfill their potential. That's just the kind of guy he was.