In the weeks leading up to the end of 2008, I'll post some blog posts that ran on 500 Words long before anyone knew what a blog was. By request, from August 6, 1989...
I don’t even remember what the Happy Waitress consists of anymore, but I do remember that it was his favorite meal at the diner.
Every summer, Sunday night, we would trek to the Ocean Queen and the king would hold court, 25 loyal members of the crown hanging on each word he spoke. You didn’t try to have your own conversation because such a transgression would draw the ire of the king. But don’t misunderstand: There was never any anger involved. He just wanted you to be a part of his group, in his world, to feel his love.
And feel it we did. Though 26 years wasn’t enough to take all he had to offer. We wanted to be a part of Anthony’s world because we knew that wherever he went, joy would follow. At baseball games too numerous to mention; through summers so sultry that the prevailing memory is of spending three months in the pool; at so many movies, he was there with us. And we were better for it.
He was loved by us and loved even more by our parents who wished that their own sons could be more like him. However, he was no mama’s boy. In fact, he always was surprising us.
He surprised us one cold December night when he told us he was going to be getting married and was going to be a father. And when you asked about his plans, he looked at me with a gleam in his eye and replied that he’d thought about the alternatives but had to have this kid because what if she grew up to be Nadia Comenici or Don Mattingly?
From anyone else, you might have laughed at this rhetoric and maybe even shaken your head in stunned disbelief. However, you believed Anthony because he believed what he was saying. He really believed it.
So we watched him fall in love and we were there when he got married. When he became a dad, he handled it all so well. And we watched him when as he got sick. Bulldog from the start, bulldog to the end: The son of a boxer who made his dad proud, fighting his own 15-round battle. He had us believing that he would beat this opponent, this cancer, because he believed it himself.
Though he’s gone, we know, on those special nights in our lives, he’s still there. When Coney threw that perfect game, he was in the empty seat next to me.
When Bruce walked onto the stage with his band for the first time in 15 years, there was Anthony with the best seat in the house. He will always have that seat. In our hearts he will get what he always deserved—the best seat in the house.
Anthony would have been 27 today and I know where he will be tonight: Section 8, Row 1, Seat 1, front-row center at the Meadowlands.
For yet another night, he will have the best seat in the house.
