Hi PMah and Cara,
Thank you for the messages. Yes, it is true that I have Rush's albums and concert DVDs. But it is difficult to deal with the loss of such a significant influence in my life. I have dreaded this event ever since I was a teenager.
And this is in addition to all of the other deaths/losses I have
had to deal with recently. In the recent past, so many
members of my extended family have died. My mother is one of 7 children. She is the youngest. She
had 3 brothers and 3 sisters. We are Italian-Americans, so we were all very close and very involved in each other's lives. My mother's brothers and sisters (my aunts and uncles) were all children of
Italian immigrants who emigrated to America in the 1920s. My mother's 3 brothers died several years ago. Within a span of about 20 months (
Spring 2018 - December 2019), my mother's 3 sisters and a close female cousin all died. My mother's last remaining sister died a few weeks ago, in December 2019. The spouses are all dead too. My mother is the last one left, and she is going to be 78 years old in a few months. It seems like all I have doing lately is going to wakes. I'm tired of going to wakes. That whole "second generation" in America (children of
Italian immigrants) is gone. They are all dead. For me, being someone who grew up "very
Italian", it is like the end of an era. At my aunt's wake last year, one of my first cousins commented, "That whole generation is gone now. We are the next generation." It's sort of like the passing of the torch.
When I was a kid back in the 1970s, we
had such a large family. Between my mother's siblings and their children (my first cousins), there were dozens of us. And, if you add to that my mother's first cousins (who
had many siblings) and their children (my third cousins), there were well over 100 of us, probably 200 or more people. When we
had parties back in the 1970s, there were well over 200 relatives there. At some point in the late 1970s, it just got to be "too much". And we literally
had to "dis-invite" over 100 people (relatives) just to get the guest list down to 100 plus people.
But most of them are dead now, and many of my surviving relatives have moved away. When we have parties now, it is such a stark contrast. Now, we are lucky if we can scrape together 5 or 10 people to show up. My mother is constantly commenting about this fact. She really misses her family.
My father (who died in 2010) was also the child of
Italian immigrants. But he came from a completely different situation. He was an only child. He
had no siblings.
My parents often jokingly told a true story about the time when they were dating (before they were married). Believe it or not, my mother's 200 plus relatives all lived within 2 or 3 blocks of each other. They were all children of immigrants from Maddaloni (Naples),
Italy. Their parents (my grandparents and their relatives) all came from the same town in
Italy, and they all settled in the same
area, literally within 2 or 3 blocks of each other. It was like "little
Italy" here in America. When my parents started dating, my mother introduced my father to all (and I mean ALL) of her relatives. My father lost track of them, and he didn't know who was who. He just knew that they were my mother's relatives, so he just waved and said "Hello" to anyone in that neighborhood. But he
had no idea who he was sating "Hello" to. My father really didn't care anyway. He wasn't a "people person". My father
had a one track mind: cars, cars, cars. If something didn't have 4 wheels and a battery, he wasn't interested in it. My father didn't remember people, but he remembered their cars.
This is where my post
comes full
circle. Neil Peart of Rush was also a "
car person", like my father (and myself). And Neil
had an extensive antique
car collection.
Meepzorp