Rage On

• Lori Palminteri
• Uncategorized
• January 6, 2022

I take it back. I take it all back. All that stuff about not wanting to live long (well, I still don’t want to live really long, like nursing home long). But maybe the prophecy that’s supposed to take place in April of 2026 is not something tragic. Maybe, it’s something great. Maybe.

And I don’t know why I’ve lived with this feeling that I would die young— my dad said he used to think that too. Maybe it’s a side effect of youth. Or maybe I just imagined death so often the sound of the Reaper’s sickle seemed to be dragging behind me.

So what? Why the change of heart? I guess it’s a combination of things. Mental stability. My nephews and niece most of all, probably. And wanting to be there for them and watch them grow up and play with as much as possible while they are still kids. And of course, the loss of my dear friend, Jeff.

“Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

Do not go gentle into that good night
— Dylan Thomas

Jeff, is the husband/ father of the family I was a nanny for for many years. His wife was my fifth grade teacher. I became her mother’s helper, then babysitter. She was first my teacher, then a mentor and for many years has been one of my closest friends. Though in many ways, Jeff and I were more similar. He felt like an older brother to me. With his widow he leaves behind four wonderful kids, too young to be without their dad.

My brother once said that my friendship with Andrea was one of the weirder things about me (he followed up that it was a long list as well). He knows the family as well and know they’re great, but I guess it is weird that one of my closest/longest female friendships was my former 5th grade teacher who is 20 years older than me. But if you know me, it really isn’t that odd.

It breaks my heart and I still cry almost everyday thinking about her and her kids. I miss him too. The rage has mostly subsided, but it scares me how it fills me up. Not just anger— rage. It’s the only way I can really describe it. It swells up inside me and I feel like my eye balls are going to burst. I picture myself breaking things and being destructive. For certain, I know that if I lost either of my parents as a teenager, I wouldn’t handle it with any grace whatsoever. I’d be in trouble. I think I’ll be in trouble, now, in my 30s if I lost my parents. While I can’t fully empathize (thank goodness) the weight those four kids have on them right now, they are better than me, that much I can say for sure.

The rage frightens me. Mostly because it’s not this external thing. It lives inside me. It’s always there. I’ve seen anger explode in some of my family members. I’ve seen their eyes go shark like. And I know I’m like that too. Though almost no one has seen it. And I take away the wrong things from this. Like the fact that before the cancer, he was so healthy. I know two other people with cancer who were also very healthy people. It’s like, what the fuck is the point? Drink all you want, do drugs, this is fucking crap shoot. Nothing matters. Or that love stories always end in tragedy. This beautiful couple, soulmates if you will, who had their happily ever after ended all too soon. In fact, it’s like this truth that I’ve known all along— that love stories are always the most tragic. What a world.

Within the talons of the rage, I see no silver linings, no happy endings, so much darkness. But perhaps my unlikely friendship with Andrea, and being this other non-blood family branch was meant to be. That if we can’t control our deaths and if our expiration dates are pre-determined, then maybe loving relationships are too. And maybe it wasn’t all those years when the kids were babies and little kids that they needed me most. Maybe it’s now. Maybe it’s what to come.

While I know I’m no substitute for a father, let alone their father, who was the best of the best, so fun, smart, loving and kind— I’ll be there as much as I can like they are my siblings’ kids. So I’d like to be around. Healthy. Happy. As I’m on my own path to be the best version of myself, working hard for my own dreams, weathering storms within myself, I find myself more grateful than ever before for the people who surround me, and even, the times we live in, even given all the uncertainty in the world right now. It’s still good to be here.