My younger cousin Damon DeCosty died of a heart attack in Jacksonville, Florida, on May 25. He was 53 years old. A celebration of his life is planned for July 22 (his birthday) in Jacksonville.

Damon’s high school yearbook photo.

Damon’s death was a huge blow to our family because his older brother, Derek DeCosty, passed away from pneumonia in January 2025.

My high school years overlapped with all three DeCosty brothers—Fiore (nicknamed “Fee”) being the oldest, followed by Derek, and then Damon, who was two years younger than me.

My cousin Fee (right), Damon (center) and I celebrate my sister Lisa’s birthday in 1980.

His obituary notes that he was born in Rome, New York, and was a member of the 1987-1988 undefeated Rome Free Academy hockey team, which won the state title. He played hockey and studied art at the State University of New York at Fredonia. He later worked in construction in Key West before beginning a career in agronomy at TPC Sawgrass Golf Course near Jacksonville.

The 1987-88 state champion RFA hockey team. Damon is the last player standing in the second row, next to Coach Dick Meiss.

But those facts don’t resonate with me on an emotional level. And in processing this loss and trying to write about it, no coherent narrative emerged. There’s no Hero’s Journey or three-act structure to guide you in mourning a loved one.

Instead, I recall images and voices—murky memories and episodic scenes that, when juxtaposed, add up to the human being known as Damon DeCosty and what he meant to his family and friends.

The things I remember about Damon:

His bronze skin, dark eyes, and black hair. He was of Italian American descent on his father’s side and Native American, with Caddo Nation heritage, on his mother’s side.

His artistic talent. I remember his hand moving across a sketch pad and seeing his artwork hanging in his room.

His placid, reserved, and affable personality. Although Damon possessed a James Dean coolness, he wasn’t aloof. Instead, you felt a sense of calmness in his presence, and people gravitated to him because of his kindness.

Damon with his dad, my Uncle Fiore DeCosty.

Damon had heart surgery at Crouse Hospital in Syracuse when he was about five years old in 1976. While my Uncle Fiore (Fee) and Aunt Pat stayed with Damon at the hospital, Fee and Derek spent the night at my parents’ house on Stanwix Street in Rome, near the Oneida County Courthouse on North James Street. I think it was a school night, and my mom packed my cousins’ lunches in their twin metal lunch boxes featuring Brazilian soccer legend Pelé.

When Damon recovered from surgery, he insisted on a sleepover at our house because he missed out on the fun, and I remember stretching out on the floor next to him as we slept.

I recall Damon and I spending a summer afternoon at our grandparents’ house on Crossgates Road. No one else was around, and we ran around in our bare feet on the patio, our feet turning black, and frolicked on the lawn, leaping over a sprinkler (a poor kid’s substitute for a swimming pool), our denim jean shorts getting soaked as we inhaled the scent of fresh-cut grass.

My cousins lived in a housing development on Seville Drive in north Rome. It seemed like a subdivision had been dropped in the middle of cleared farmland. Damon’s mom, my Aunt Pat, was a dietitian. And while the growing boys always had enough to eat, she didn’t buy them junk food. Their cereal choices were healthy, whole-grain products, such as Wheaties and Cheerios.

Damon (seated) and Derek with their mom, my Aunt Pat (sometime around 1980).

But on at least one occasion, while spending the weekend with my cousins, I remember my Aunt Pat went out shopping, and Derek and Fee sprang into action. They raced around the house, collecting small bills and coins, and gave the money to Damon with instructions to run across a cornfield and buy a box of sugary cereal at a nearby convenience store. Damon returned with a box of Frosted Flakes, Cocoa Pebbles, Trix, or Lucky Charms (I can’t remember the exact brand). But we all sat at the kitchen table, passing around the milk and wolfing down bowls of cereal, then discarding the box and hiding the evidence before Aunt Pat returned home.

In remembering Damon, I also find myself thinking about my late father, Francis DiClemente Sr., and reflecting on how divorce complicates family relationships, especially for children. When families fracture, the boundaries between relatives blur.

My mother and Damon’s father were siblings. Does that mean when my parents divorced, my dad stopped being an uncle to the DeCosty boys? Or after Damon’s parents divorced, did his mom (who was also my godmother) cease being my aunt?

Does divorce sever relations with non-blood relatives? Do you erase the bonds of love and family just because a couple separates? That’s a topic for a whole separate essay.

I bring this up because many years after my parents split, my dad would ask about Fee, Derek, and Damon. He really cared about them. And if they visited the Sears store in Rome where he worked, they would seek him out and say “hello.”

And it’s not politically correct, but whenever my father asked about Damon, he would say, “Hey, how’s the Little Chief doing? What’s up with the Little Chief? Tell the Little Chief I said ‘hello.’”

I must also admit that when I heard Damon had died, one of the first thoughts that popped into my head was that Fiore is now The Last of the Mohicans (also not politically correct).

Damon and I bonded over our mutual love of music. Our shared tastes included U2, The Cure, Grateful Dead, Genesis, The Replacements, R.E.M., Jane’s Addiction, The Cult, The Smiths, and many other artists.

Damon and I were part of a contingent of Romans that went to the Metallica concert in Weedsport, NY on July 16, 1989. We were more eager to see the opening act, The Cult. Damon is wearing the backwards baseball cap.

Fee shared a couple of Damon’s YouTube music playlists with me. One is titled Essential Dead, and includes tracks from the Grateful Dead and other jam bands. The other is titled simply Work.

I enjoy shuffling through the Work playlist and imagining Damon mowing a fairway, adjusting a pin placement at TPC Sawgrass, doing some odd carpentry work, or putting the final touches on a large-scale oil painting. The playlist contains more than 300 tracks—over seven hours of music—and it consoles me knowing I’m listening to songs curated by Damon, tracks that held special meaning for him.