Tuesday, December 17, 2002 :::
 

The temptation is there to go back and dig through my boxes of books from my time at the nursing school and see where I was that day. I want to see if anything was strange or amiss, did I misspell something or flunk a test (I didn’t flunk any) but something must have happened some moment when everything seemed strange. I am usually good at knowing when someone is gone, ( sometimes it's uncanny) but with him, I didn’t know. I kept waiting and wondering and looking at busy streets and thinking that I saw him at bus stops or in stores or hiding outside my house. I knew he’d show up sooner or later and he never did and I got mad at him for the last 5 or 6 years, real mad, thinking that he didn’t care, or that he was busy enjoying his life, and there I was with his kid and having to deal with it, with no help and I stayed mad, but I still hoped that he would be there for Eddie. (hope is dumb)

I know if I go through my journals and my note books that I’ll find that day in the Autumn of 94 and I’ll be able to trace it back to that last moment and I want to see if maybe I knew, or felt anything at all was strange.

::: posted by melanie at 7:53 PM

Sunday, December 15, 2002 :::
 

This summer, I had the most incredibly moving experience of my life. Ric’s family accepted Ed and me with out any question. I have a picture hanging on my wall that was in Ric’s wallet when he died. He is holding Eddie and Eddie is around 9 months old. Ric is biting his lip and his eyes are filled with tears. He is so proud to have this son. I remember taking the picture, and how Ric always bit his lip to keep from crying. The light of the flash frames their faces. Ric is staring intently and Eddie’s eyes are filled with surprise. They look so much alike. The shape of the face, the eyes, and the nose is exactly the same.

I learned that his family always called him Rock-n-Roll Ric. His brother works part time as a DJ and their father, Robert had a weekend radio show, and a Bowling Alley. They were all Elvis fanatics, and I viewed series of family photos of Graceland vacations, some before Elvis’ death, with a very young Ric and Tom posed outside the king’s gates.

When Ric was a teenager, he and his best friend, grew their hair long and walked around playing guitars and telling everyone that they were going to be a rock stars.

We went to Cleveland to the Rock Roll Hall of Fame and we brought along Ric’s nephew, who is eighteen. He walked side by side with Ed. They looked like brothers. One was tall and dark (Ric's nephew) the other slight and Blonde (Ed). They posed around giant paper mache guitars, laughing and clowning to the chagrin of the frowning staff. (I would have the Badass kids with me, the ones who smoked and posed and tried so hard to look cool)

Before we left Port Clinton. Ed and I went to Ric’s grave. We pushed back the stone and left our armbands from the hall of fame, a picture of Ed, some Mardi Gras beads from a New Orleans parade and Ed wrote on the side of the tombstone, “Daddy I love you“. It felt strange to leave him there it was sooo unRiclike to be reduced to a formal name on a gray piece of stone, I was glad we jazzed it up for him.

::: posted by melanie at 9:15 AM