Pandora’s Box: “Ode to Manny”….part three

This morning while taking a shower I started thinking and asking myself why is it that after all these years with all the things that have happened to me, why is it that now I asked my doctor to put me on antidepressants?

And then it hit me…Manny is gone.  After battling four different kinds of cancer and winning those battles, it was the fifth cancer that was too much for him.  I thought he would win that battle just like the others and we continued to make plans to go to Spain and I encouraged him to write and work on his book, his memoirs.

Manny passed away on Dec 27, 2008, while I was having my Christmas party.  I kind of like to think that he didn’t want to miss it and was their in spirit.

We met while working on the T.V. show “L.A. Law”.  We became great friends.

Manny was from Cuba, the pre-Castro Cuba, with servants and big mansions and parties.  We had talked about going to Cuba as well.

We shared Salsa music, fried plantains, mofongo, guavas and crazy latina mothers.

He directed the play I wrote, “Juan Y Rosa, La Virgen and Flan”.

He is the one who pointed out to me that I accomplish more when I am not in a relationship…and he was right.  We all have that one person that we can bare our soul to, that one person that can tell us like it is and we listen.

Manny, was that person for me.  He was the one person I could tell everything to and he never judged me, nor I him.

He was my soul mate, my best friend, my therapist, my personal cheerleader,…my beloved friend.

Manny hated the hypocrisy of funerals.  He hated t see people crying and boo-hooing yet they weren’t there when the person was alive and he wanted none of that.

So, there was no funeral, no memorial.  He was cremated and I did not get to mourn him properly.

And that is why I take those little blue pills, because my go-to guy is gone.

And this morning my tears joined the water flowing down my body as I realized that and I cried out to my friend, “Manny, I miss you and I hope you are watching over me…..”

Pandora’s Box ….part two

 

My mother tells me that I need to write a letter to my dad telling him how I feel to get it off of my chest.

My sister tells me that I need to write a letter to my mom telling her how I feel to get it off my chest.

My sister wrote a letter to my brother telling it all…as of yet he has not responded.

My sister wrote a letter to my dad telling it all and he denies it all.

I’m not sure if my dad is in the early stages of Alzheimer’s or merely has selective memory.

Somehow writing a letter does not seem to be enough, especially considering the response and lack of response my sister has already received from my father and brother.

Oh to clarify my sister and I are from the first marriage, my brother is from the second marriage.

Somehow it seems that when my father divorced my mother he also divorced my sister and I, at least that is the way it feels to us.

Both of us have said to our brother that even though we have the same biological father we had different dads.

We had the same dad but not the same dad.

So writing a letter that most likely will be ignored is not enough for me.

I want to out him.  I want to out him to my brother and all his friends and all of my father’s friends that think that he is a great father/person/husband.

I want them to know he was an awful husband and an absentee father.  He was their physically but not emotionally.

My stepmother, who by the way is only eight years older than me asked me shortly after her marriage if the rumors about my father cheating on my mother were true. Ah, rumors….they were not rumors and I know first hand.

What do you say about a man who brings a strange blonde woman and her eight year old son to the house while mom is away looking after her sick mother, and says to his eight and six-year-old daughters, that this strange blonde and her son is your new mom and brother?

They were not rumors.  He had the audacity to bring his mistress around his young daughters.

The rumor that he used to hit my mother, that two was not a rumor.

The night that he brought a gun into our home, shortly after the divorce, saying that he was going to kill all of us, that is not a rumor.  That is one of my sister’s nightmares. I was not home that night.  I was at school rehearsing a play.  But I can guarantee you that neither my sister or my mother are lying.

That man is not my father.

My dad is the man I would excitedly wait for after work.  He always brought me some little toy or candy that he picked up on the subway ride home.  I remember chocolate cigarette and pop-corn balls, and cracker jack boxes.

My dad is the man who used to draw superheroes on my sister’s and my arms, years before face painting came into vogue.

My dad is the man who I saw run after some thugs who had just robbed and beat my grandfather at the age of five.

My dad is the man who carried me to the hospital and  who held me as doctors put 10 stitches into my cracked head when I was six.

That is my dad, but I don’t know where he went.  And I miss that dad but he disappeared a long time ago, long before the divorce.

I can’t help it that I look just like my mom……but I miss my Daddy.

And the anger is so great because the hurt is so deep…..