There’s a feeling of spring in Central New York as temperatures have warmed up and snow piles have receded. Here are some recent photos documenting the transitional period.
Snow pile in downtown Syracuse.
This denuded patch of land along Erie Boulevard East reminded me of a plain in Nebraska.
Best Time of the Year
Snow finally
giving way
to grass
in Syracuse.
Cold mornings,
but temps
climbing
above 40.
March Madness,
Lenten fish fries
and the crack
of the bat.
Yippee …
it looks like
we’ve survived
another winter.
But never forget—
in Syracuse
a lake-effect blast
can still chase away
the Easter Bunny
and send the Moms
scurrying to their closets
to retrieve sweaters
on Mother’s Day.
Seeing every person
As a 12-year-old child
Taking a school photo
Eliminates any animosity
You may have for that person.
When you imagine
The awkward kid squinting
At the camera lens—
You discover yourself
Staring back at you.
My cousin Derek DeCosty passed away earlier this year in Jacksonville, Florida. He had been sick around Christmas with a respiratory illness, and we texted on New Year’s Eve. He died on Jan. 3, one day before his 57th birthday. Here’s his obituary.
I’ve spent time processing this loss and bringing the memories of Derek to the surface of my mind—flipping through photo albums, seeing his face, and hearing his ebullient laughter as I recalled moments we shared.
While I felt compelled to write about him, I also dreaded it because this loss is too personal. And what could I say that would make any difference? How could my reflections ease my grief or the sorrow of my relatives? But I hope my words can honor Derek and offer a glimpse into the life of this beautiful soul.
Derek’s father, Fiore (Fee) DeCosty, and his sister Carmella, my mother, were raised in Rome, New York, along with two other siblings, my Aunt Teresa—who goes by her religious name of Sister Carmella—and my Uncle Frank. Derek’s mother, Patricia (my Aunt Pat), is a member of the Caddo Nation of Oklahoma and settled in central New York with Uncle Fee.
A Special Bond
Growing up in Rome, I spent a lot of time with Derek, his older brother, Fiore (Fee), and his younger brother, Damon.
Although I wasn’t a brother to them, I felt something stronger than a typical cousin bond. Derek and I had a special connection because we were only one grade apart in school.
Both of our nuclear families experienced divorce in the early 1980s, and I believe that shared pain also drew us closer.
And being related to the DeCosty boys had its perks.
They were athletes, part of the popular crowd, and because of them, I received party invitations I wouldn’t have gotten otherwise. Pretty girls who swooned over Derek talked to me because they knew I had a direct line to him. And as a short, chubby tenth-grader scurrying through the halls of Rome Free Academy high school for the first time during my sophomore year in 1984, no students teased or bullied me because they knew I was related to the DeCostys.
Cousins gathered at our grandmother’s house. My cousin Chris is in the front row. Second row, from left to right, is Damon, my sister, Lisa, and me; Fee and Derek are in the back row.
Weekends at the DeCosty household were a regular part of my youth. I attended their hockey games (sometimes traveling with my Uncle Fee on road trips) and stretched out on the couch in their cramped ranch house on Seville Drive in north Rome.
If I remember correctly, Damon had a bedroom on the main level, while Derek and Fee slept in the basement in two small, makeshift rooms separated by thin drywall. Three mounds of fetid and sweat-drenched hockey equipment were piled high near the washer and dryer. A boom box blasted music—with The Rolling Stones, The Who, Genesis, The Fixx, and The Police getting frequent play.
The boys practiced their wrist, snap, and slapshots by firing hockey pucks at a white cement wall, festooning the surface with pockmarks and black spots.
Although I was a rabid hockey fan, I had given up playing the sport when I was young because I couldn’t skate. Picture Bambi slipping on the ice. So when Fee, Derek, and Damon were not playing ice hockey, I tried to stir up a game of street hockey or floor hockey. Floor hockey was my favorite, especially on holidays at our Grandma Josephine’s house. We would get on our knees in the living room and use mini sticks and a rolled-up ball of athletic tape as the puck in fierce battles that left us with elbows to the face and rugburns on our knees.
One holiday, Damon, Derek, and I played a football game called “goal-line stance” in Derek’s bedroom. The memory is murky, but this is what I think happened.
With the twin bed pushed against the wall, the front of the mattress was the goal line. Derek was the ball carrier. He was getting annoyed because Damon and I were double-teaming him and standing him up, so he stuffed the football under his arm and leaped over us, Walter Payton style, his body parallel to the ground, until his shoulder slammed into the wall with a loud bang as he landed on the bed.
The collision created a large dent in the drywall, evoking our laughter. “Ah, shit,” Derek said.
My dad, who worked in home improvement (among other areas) at the local Sears store, was at the house for the holiday. I went upstairs, found him in the kitchen, and waved for him to come downstairs.
“What’s up?” he said as we descended the stairs.
“We hit the wall while playing. Can you look at it?”
When my father inspected the damage, he laughed and said, “Oh, you can’t fix that. You boys better hang a poster over it.”
And that’s what Derek and Damon did. I don’t know if my Uncle Fee ever discovered the dent.
Moments in Time
When you lose a loved one, it’s often the small, seemingly insignificant moments that trigger memories. For my deceased father, I picture him sitting in his green easy chair, reading glasses perched on his nose, making his football parlay and Lotto picks (or reviewing the losing tickets).
For my mother, who passed away in 2011, I remember the anxiety that weighed on her—like an oak beam pressing on her shoulders—as she smoked her first cigarette of the morning and drank coffee from a blue ceramic mug, her head bowed, her fingers pressed to her forehead.
For Derek, I remember him chopping ice in Josephine’s driveway and hitting one of his toes, which bled profusely (but did not require medical attention). From then on, if he walked around the house barefoot, I would ask him, “Hey, Derek, can you tell me which one of your toes had difficulty?” To which he would say, “Shut up, man.”
Other things I recall about Derek:
His deep, dark brown eyes; his mixed Italian and Native American heritage; his copper-colored skin in the middle of summer; his large ears that I loved to flick.
From left to right: Fee, Derek, my sister, Lisa, and me. When I posted this photo on Facebook, Derek wrote: “Take it down cuz!!!! Look at the size of me ears!!!!”
The way he would fly on the ice and the joy he exhibited in playing the sport he loved. His big hands, smooth and soft, as he used them to thread a pass or deke a goalie.
And with those hands, he created beautiful artwork. I can imagine him sitting at our grandma’s dining room table, his left hand making a charcoal drawing on a sketch pad.
A pencil sketch Derek made during junior high school.
His love of eating—not just food but the act of eating with family. One of his favorites was Josephine’s pasta beans (pasta fazool), made with cannellini beans and ditalini pasta. “Yeah, pasta beans,” he would say when entering the house on Thursday nights in the winter when Grandma often cooked the dish. He would dunk huge chunks of Ferlo’s Italian bread in the bowl, sopping up the juice, and say, “Ah, Grandma, this is so good. So good.”
His booming voice. He never called me Fran. Whenever I saw or talked to him on the phone, it was always, “Franny D. My man. What’s up?”
His infectious laugh. It started deep in his throat, rolling upward until it was released in waves. Hearing him laugh made you want to join in the fun.
He lit up any room he walked into with his charisma and humility. People were attracted to him because of his inherent goodness and gratitude for whatever you gave him.
And the true beauty of Derek is that he never thought he was better than anyone else. Despite being a star athlete, talented artist, and Honor Society scholar in high school, he was never arrogant or looked down on others.
Fee, Derek, and me in the summer of 1990.
The closest analogy I can make is the scene with Edie McClurg as the secretary Grace in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, when she’s describing Ferris to Principal Ed Rooney, played by Jeffrey Jones.
Grace: “Oh, he’s very popular, Ed. The sportos, the motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, wastoids, dweebies, dickheads—they all adore him. They think he’s a righteous dude.”
That was Derek.
A Cherished Memory
In October 1984, I received the Catholic sacrament of Confirmation at St. John the Baptist Church in Rome.
In this sacrament of initiation, the baptized person is “sealed with the gift of the Holy Spirit. (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops).”
I made the mistake of asking Derek to be my sponsor because I didn’t understand the commitment it entailed.
I thought it meant his only responsibility would be standing up with me in church during the Mass on Confirmation day. That’s it. Instead, he needed to attend preparation workshops, retreats, and church school events over the course of several weeks. He never complained, even though he was the youngest sponsor. Practically everyone else had their mom or dad serving in that role.
We had to choose a Confirmation name after a saint or a figure from the Bible. Although I knew little about the Old Testament prophet Isaiah, I selected the name because I loved Detroit Pistons guard Isiah Thomas (whose first name is spelled differently).
Standing outside St. John’s Church in Rome on the day of my Confirmation in October 1984.
In a photo taken outside the church that day, Derek towers over me, even though he was only about a year-and-a-half older than me. At the time, a benign tumor on my pituitary gland (a craniopharyngioma) was expanding in my brain, stunting my growth and causing delayed puberty. About two months after the photo was taken, surgeons would remove the tumor in an eight-hour operation at SUNY Upstate Medical Center in Syracuse (renamed Upstate University Hospital).
And as I recovered in the surgical intensive care unit, Derek came to visit me, bringing a torn picture of the Sports Illustrated cover featuring an image of Doug Flutie from the “Hail Mary” game against the University of Miami in the Orange Bowl. Derek knew I loved Flutie and was inspired by the quarterback because of his short stature. He pinned the magazine page to my IV stand so I could see it when I looked up from my bed.
Hockey Career: From the Mohawk Valley to Crossing the Atlantic
In 1986, when he was a senior in high school, Derek led Rome Free Academy to its first New York State title in hockey as the Black Knights defeated Skaneateles in Glens Falls. (Damon was a member of the 1988 RFA team that captured the school’s second state championship.)
Derek went on to play Division 1 hockey for the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) Engineers. At the time, Fee was at West Point, playing for the United States Military Academy. In this contest pitting Army against RPI, Fee is chasing Derek and hooking him.
Fee and Derek competing in college hockey.
After I graduated from college and moved away from Rome, I stayed in contact with Derek while his professional hockey career flourished.
In the mid-1990s, Derek played for the Wheeling Thunderbirds (later renamed Nailers) in the East Coast Hockey League while I was living in Toledo with my sister, Lisa, and working at the news/talk radio station WSPD. Wheeling played the Toledo Storm frequently, and Derek would leave tickets for us at will-call at the Toledo Sports Arena. In exchange for the tickets, we would bring him a case of beer.
I would hang out near the Wheeling locker room and watch the players come out. And then I’d yell, “Hey, DeCosty, you suck.” His head would spin around, and then he’d laugh when he saw me.
After the game, we would grab the beer from the car and talk with Derek for a few minutes near his team bus, the diesel engine roaring and a frigid wind whipping off the Maumee River hitting us in the face.
I took this photo with my Pentax K1000 camera during Derek’s playing days with the Wheeling Thunderbirds.
One night in Toledo, Derek got injured on his first shift of the game. While Derek forechecked with his linemates in the Storm’s zone, a Toledo defenseman whipped the puck along the glass, and it smacked Derek in the face. Blood gushed from his nose, and he went right off the ice and into the locker room. We followed the ambulance as it rushed him to the emergency room. And we spent a few hours talking with Derek in the hospital while the ER doctors treated him.
Another time, late on a windy, wintry Saturday afternoon, I found out from my uncle that Derek was playing that night in Dayton, Ohio, about two hours from Toledo. These were the days before cell phones, so I called the arena and left a message for Derek to leave me a ticket at will-call. I was like a hockey groupie.
Strong gusts rocked my Dodge Colt as I filled up at a gas station in Bowling Green, and blowing snow made visibility difficult on I-75. But I made it to the arena, watched Derek play against the Dayton Bombers, talked with him for about twenty minutes, and drove home that night, getting lost on my way out of the city and back onto I-75.
My favorite memory of Derek’s playing days is driving from Toledo to Wheeling one weekend. Derek talked to the coach, who let me ride the team bus for a short road trip from West Virginia to Johnstown, Pennsylvania.
The jocular banter by Derek’s teammates reminded me of scenes from the movie Slap Shot. One player curled up with a blanket in the back of the bus and shouted numerous times: “Hey driver, it’s getting frosty back here. Crank up that heat.”
A hockey card image from his career in Wheeling. Copyright unknown.
But what impressed me most was witnessing how much Derek’s teammates liked and respected him and how his relationship with the friendly people of Wheeling went beyond the surface-level player-fan dynamic. They adored Derek as a valued member of the community, and he returned their affection, making lasting friendships with non-players in the city.
Derek’s professional career later took him abroad as he played for teams in the United Kingdom, including the Guilford Flames and Bracknell Bees.
Relocating to Florida
Derek moved to Florida after his hockey career ended.
And I remember after his father was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2010, Derek drove with Uncle Fee from New York to Jacksonville so he could get treatment at the Mayo Clinic. Derek settled in the Jacksonville area, beginning a career in agronomy at the prestigious TPC Sawgrass Golf Course in Ponte Vedra Beach, home of The Players Championship.
A year later, my wife, Pam, and I spent a few days in Jacksonville, staying with my uncle and his wife, Diane. I remember everyone sitting on the patio on a hot May day while Derek mowed the lawn and trimmed some hedges in the backyard.
Derek was tanned, and he had the most casual, easygoing manner, not complaining that he was doing yard work in the heat while the rest of us were enjoying cool drinks and bantering in the shade. A cigarette dangled from his mouth as he maneuvered around the yard, and he stopped working occasionally to take sips from a bottle of beer.
##
There’s so much more I could say about Derek, so much more I have forgotten and will likely remember later when reminiscing about him.
I took my time drafting this essay. Part of the reason for my slow pace is that I relished roaming around my past accompanied by my beloved cousin.
I feel profound sadness knowing that Derek’s warmth and kind heart are no longer active in the world—that his light, voice, and laughter are no longer accessible to his family, friends, and other people.
But I believe his artwork and the loving impact he made during his short life will endure.
A colorful painting by Derek DeCosty.
With his carefree manner, Derek reminded me a little of Jeff Bridges as the Dude in The Big Lebowski. And I hope Derek’s soul is now at peace and he’s abiding in the cosmos, embarking on celestial wanderings in the afterworld with a sense of curiosity and wonder.
##
I found out about Derek’s death via text when I was at a doctor’s appointment. After I left the medical building, while riding the bus, some words came to me in verse form. I don’t get the heartstrings reference since it’s not a musical instrument, but I guess I conjured the image of an angel playing a harp (like you’d see in old cartoons).
A Poem for Derek
Heartstrings playing in heaven.
Derek is laughing.
But the joke is on us.
He’s gone and won’t be back.
Words that come to me
After the death of my cousin.
No recognition of meaning,
But I must write them anyway—
Words perpetuating memories
To keep my cousin’s spirit alive.
I wish I could hear him laughing,
And ask him what he finds so funny.
Painting by Derek DeCosty.
First-Person Ending
I will end with a few text messages Derek sent me over the past couple of years. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind me sharing them. They reflect his love of life, sense of humor, and compassion for others. I’ve edited them for brevity and clarity.
Note: Because of his family connection to Oklahoma, Derek was a fan of the University of Oklahoma football team (hence the reference to the Sooners). And Colin refers to my son.
The first text is from the summer of 2023, when I needed another brain surgery (my sixth) to remove tumor regrowth. As I awaited my operation, Derek wrote:
June 8, 2023
My beautiful cuz, I understand that you’re going through some shit again regarding those same issues that you’ve conquered in the past and I have no doubt you will again kick ass in our true Bukowski way! I wanted you to know that I have you in my mind, heart, and when I talk to our parents looking down, I’m sure that you have the strength and heart of a buffalo! I love you Fran, don’t ever doubt that you aren’t thought about every day I wake up!
July 24, 2023
My dear cousin, I want you to know that I am thinking about you right now and praying that you are doing well after your surgery. I have you on my mind, in my heart and ask that I take any pain you feel. I love you dearly, more than you know. Stay tough.
October 5, 2024
Good morning my dear cousin!!! This is Derek, this is my new number, new carrier! Just wanted you to have it! Miss and love you all dearly! Saw a really cool tree I have to capture for you. Old crazy oak that I wish you could see! Very photogenic! Anyhow, give Pam and Colin a kiss for me and…..GO YANKS!!!!!
Photo by Derek DeCosty from his Instagram account. He wrote: “Tiny Osprey feather stuck in pro practice green this beautiful morning!”
November 30, 2024
Good afternoon my dear cousin!! Happy Thanksgiving and all that, give my very best to Colin and a big hug for Pam! Hope yall enjoyed the holiday!! Miss and love you dearly!! Crazy day of football today, love it!!! Much love, Go ’Cuse&Boomer Sooner!!
November 30, 2024 (Later)
Sorry Cuz, I had to make a Target run for my mother!
Francis, you’ve always been my Saint, there’s not many people on this earth that understand me in the gracious way you and Damon (sometimes!) get me and the hundred personalities, moods, and craziness that encapsulates all I’m about!! Anyhow, I have to start screaming at the Sooners to get their shit together!!! All my love.
December 31, 2024
My man!!!! Happy New Year to you and all the family! Anyway, straight after Xmas, I caught the flu, of the respiratory type! I’ve been down and out and only going back to work tomorrow!!! Francis, I send my very best to Pam and Colin! Give them a hug for me please! Love and miss you!
Photo by Derek DeCosty from his Instagram account. The text read: “Good morning from the driving range floor, ready for the Players. Happy days!”
A woman with scraggly red hair approaches me at the bus stop near the corner of Washington and Warren streets in Syracuse. She’s dressed in a thin flannel shirt, sweatpants, and sneakers. In a soft voice, she asks, “Do you have a cigarette and a dollar?”
“What?” I ask. I could barely hear her.
“Do you have a cigarette and a dollar?” she repeats.
I don’t smoke, and although I had some dollars in my wallet, I said, “No.”
I didn’t want to remove my gloves because of the cold, and I need the singles for bus fare.
“God bless you, honey,” she said, then walked toward the edge of the curb, paused to look around, and crossed the street, shuffling ahead of the traffic that had the right of way.
I wanted to cross the intersection, chase after her, yank out my wallet, and give her a dollar, but my feet remained planted on the sidewalk as guilt and shame washed over me.
At that moment, selfishness prevailed over compassion. I ignored the woman’s plight and rejected an opportunity to offer kindness to another human being.
And while I can’t help the woman now, I hope awareness about my failure means I will do better the next time someone asks me for assistance.
With Central New York under a Lake Effect Snow Warning and temperatures set to plummet in the next few days, I am sharing some of my winter-themed poems, along with some recent photos.
Winter Evening
Night—streetlights flicker.
Snow falls softly on sidewalks.
Crews plow the streets clean.
Contrast
Feathers replace leaves
In the naked trees
Looming above Genesee Street,
As flocks of crows arrive to
Take their repose and roost for the night,
The clumps of birds stretching for blocks,
A curtain of black set against
The landscape bleached white by
Fresh-fallen snow and layers of rock salt.
In California, the sun is shining.
In Syracuse, snow is falling.
I want to defrost my toes
by burying them in the sand
at Santa Monica Beach—
watch the waves crashing ashore,
hear the seagulls squawking
and smell the salty air.
But I’m pulled out
of this reverie
by the sound of a
shovel blade
striking pavement
and exhaust fumes
entering my nostrils,
bringing me back to the reality
of a Central New York
scene I can’t escape.
I get in the car and
the warm air from the
heater smacks me in the face
as I scan the FM radio stations,
hoping to come across
the Mamas and the Papas
singing “California Dreamin’.”
That’s as close as I’ll get
to the Golden State
on such a winter’s day.
It takes one fall
on the icy sidewalk
for your life to be ruined.
That’s right, just one tumble—
arms flailing,
legs scissoring in the air,
back parallel to the ground,
eyes looking up at a gray sky
unable to intervene—
in a brief suspended
moment before wham—
skull meets ground and blackness ensues.
Traumatic brain injury follows,
and you slip into a coma.
Your family huddles bedside,
waiting for you to rouse,
to wake up and rejoin the living,
like a grizzly bear stepping out
of its den after hibernation.
If you do come out of it
with some brain activity intact,
you may be a shell—withering
in a long-term nursing home.
And while you exist inside,
the costs mount for your family,
and the world outside your window
drags on, unaware of your predicament.
All this because some ice tripped you up.
So don’t be surprised if you see me
walking gingerly on the
glassy surface of the sidewalk,
digging my heels into a
pile of rock salt near the curb,
spreading it around on my soles,
strapping on a pair of
Yaktrax over my boots,
or cutting across the snow-covered lawns.
I guess I don’t mind dying,
or being knocked unconscious,
but I would feel awfully foolish
if a patch of frozen moisture does me in.
The only way to survive
a Syracuse winter
is to think of the snow
as a friend and not a foe.
When you scrape the ice
crusted on your windshield
and the snow clogs the streets,
when your tires spin,
or your car veers off the road—
regarding the snow
as a friend and not a foe
will help you to tolerate the season.
Even when the snow lashes
your face as it blows sideways,
or frozen clumps melt inside your boots,
making your feet cold and damp,
you must remember to
view the snow as a friend instead of a foe.
And what a friend … a friend that keeps on
giving and giving and giving
six months out of the year.
To which I say:
Thank you, my dear friend,
but I don’t need your generosity.
In a blizzard like this, you can’t determine gender.
People are just stooped figures,
black forms trudging through the heavy, wet snow,
swallowed by the maw of the storm.
I usually don’t make New Year’s resolutions, but this one came to me amid my battle with a post-Christmas stomach bug (maybe norovirus). In my febrile state, I told myself, “I will stop looking back on the past with regret.”
As someone who writes memoir, I often live in the past—reviewing incidents and conversations that occurred years and decades ago and trying to cull sensory details from those moments to make scenes come alive on the page. So I spend a lot of time on yesterday. My office is overflowing with manuscripts documenting countless yesterdays.
A tree in my neighborhood, observed on Dec. 31, 2024.
But for my 2025 New Year’s resolution, I will attempt to stop that negative line of thought regarding “what could’ve been.” I will instruct myself to stop replaying the poor decisions I made in my progression from boy to man.
And I do have regrets. Many. Most nettlesome are the ones where I let fear stand in the way of opportunity—when I was too frightened to take a risk, either professionally or personally. Some of those decisions still haunt me. In this previous blog post, I wrote about my regret about not moving to California after graduating from college.
But in my sickened state, while I tossed and turned in my son’s twin bed—separated from my wife and son so as not to infect them—I thought, “What have all these regrets done for me?” They certainly don’t make the present more bearable or the future more promising. So why hold on to them?
So in 2025, when I get that tickling of regret inside my brain, I will try to shut it down before it festers.
And one of the poems from my collection The Truth I Must Invent seems fitting for me on this New Year’s Eve. I wish everyone a safe and happy New Year. The poem follows. And I apologize for the profanity, but a clean word replacement wouldn’t have the same effect.
The Wanting is the Hardest Part
Tom Petty was wrong.
The waiting isn’t the hardest part.
The wanting is the hardest part.
Wanting fucks everything up—
wanting a better job, a better marriage,
a better house, a better life.
That seed of desire fucks with your head,
makes you think you can be something you’re not.
What if I discarded desire? What if I stopped wanting?
What if I no longer sought a better life?
Can I let go of that fantasy
and accept who I am right now,
without seeking a better version of myself—
the idealized me I hold inside my head?
December 26th is
the most dreaded
day of the year.
All the anticipation
of Christmas
has now passed.
The turkey stuffed,
cooked and consumed.
Tins of cookies devoured,
packages ripped apart,
wine bottles drained—
bellies full and
waistlines expanded.
It’s back to work,
with a fat credit card
statement delivered
securely to your inbox.
And yes, you can still say
“Happy Holidays,”
but it doesn’t have
the same ring
on the day
after Christmas.
And New Year’s Day
is a distant cousin
of Christmas—
with January 1st
lacking the allure
and magic of
December 25th.
While watching the film Red One (starring Dwayne Johnson and J.K. Simmons) recently, a childhood memory connected to Christmas and Santa Claus popped into my head. When Santa’s massive, modern North Pole complex appeared on screen, I mentioned to my wife, Pamela, that my parents had taken my sister, Lisa, and me to Santa’s Workshop, a theme park in North Pole, New York, up in the Adirondacks, one summer when we were small kids in the early 1970s.
My sister Lisa and me when we were small.
When we embarked on the family trip, I was around five years old, and my parents were still married. My ears plugged as our little green station wagon (if I recall correctly) navigated the road, climbing higher into the mountains. Along the way, we stopped for a pancake breakfast at a roadside diner. After hopping out of the car, I observed the ring of surrounding blue mountains, felt the warm sunshine on my neck, and smelled the clean outdoor air.
Once we arrived at the park, I couldn’t wait to see Santa’s reindeer. The animals were housed in individual stalls in a barn, and their nameplates identified them as Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner, Blitzen, and Rudolph.
Photo Credit: North Pole, NY
But a scary moment followed when I left the barn and entered a petting zoo. An angry white goat chased me in the ring, nipping at my heels and chomping at my butt. I fell and became terrified the goat would chew my face off. My father laughed, picked me up, and shook off the dust that had covered my blue jeans.
An age appropriate image for the story.
Later, when it was my time to sit on Santa’s lap, I said to the older man wearing the fake white beard and red suit, “Listen, Santa, I have to tell you something.”
“Go on, young man,” he said.
“One of your goats was not very nice. He chased me and tried to bite me.”
“Oh, I’m very sorry to hear that,” Santa said. “I’ll go to the barn later and have a word with him. I promise you that won’t happen again.”
“Thank you, Santa,” I said and then proceeded to give him my Christmas wishes.
##
The North Pole visit was one of our last vacations as a nuclear family. My parents would divorce a few years later.
Now, when I work on nonfiction and memoir projects, I find it mysterious and blessed how one little thing—such as seeing the Red One—can trigger a sense of recall, starting the movie projector running within your personal memory vault. It’s like all the scenes from our past are still tucked inside, and we just need a way to access them. For me, the key is trying to remember the sensory details from a particular incident or time period.
I wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.
I am celebrating an important milestone today—the 40th anniversary of my first brain surgery to remove a benign tumor engulfing my pituitary gland. I have written about this ordeal many times in the past, including in this long 2014 post.
On this day, four decades ago, surgeons cracked open my skull and extracted the craniopharyngioma that had stunted my growth and delayed my transition from boy to man.
In this essay, I reflect on my experience as a teenager in 1984 while a patient at SUNY Upstate Medical Center (renamed Upstate University Hospital) in Syracuse, New York. I am limiting the narrative period to the day of surgery and my immediate recovery.
Upstate University Hospital
Surgery Day: An Essay
1.
Early morning. Blackness. I can smell the breakfast trays delivered on the hospital floor—watery eggs, ham and bacon, soggy oatmeal, and weak tea and coffee. The noise outside my room grows as patients awaken and nurses draw blood and administer medicine.
My appointment with the medical intervention team has arrived. I am fifteen years old and ready for surgery day, prepared for the trauma that awaits me on the table. My head will be shaved, and my skull sawed open. The tumor growing in my head—wrapped around my pituitary gland and stifling my maturation—will be plucked free, yanked out like an infected molar and then examined under a microscope to determine its classification. We must name our enemies to defeat them.
Once removed, the lesion will relinquish dominion over my body. I will be cut loose from its tentacles. The surgery will disrupt my endocrine system, leading to a permanent condition known as hypopituitarism and propelling me on a long road toward “catch-up” growth and development.
A photo of my father and me two months before the operation in 1984.
2.
A nurse enters my room and hands me a small plastic cup filled with a few pills. “This will just relax you,” she says as I swallow the pre-surgery drugs. About a half-hour later, she returns and says, “It’s time for you to go down now.” A softness squishes against the edges of my mind; I am drifting from consciousness.
An orderly comes to take me away—filling nearly the entire space inside the door frame. A hulking figure with thick, black hair, a black beard, and muscular forearms, he reminds me of Bluto from the Popeye the Sailor cartoons. But for some reason, I call him Hugo.
“OK, Hugo,” I say, “I’m ready now.” Hugo helps me slide over from my bed to a stretcher as the nurse covers me with a sheet and a blanket.
My family gathers around me, bending down to kiss me and wish me “good luck.” What does “good luck” mean on the operating table? I wonder.
Tears stream down my mother’s cheeks, which are red and wind-burned and feel cold against my skin as she kisses my face and forehead; she squeezes my hand and then releases her grip and steps away.
Hugo unlocks the wheels of the gurney and steers it out of the room and into the hallway. Even though I am sleepy, I stay awake for the ride, keeping my eyes open and watching the panels of fluorescent lights pass overhead as we make our way through the hospital corridors and into an elevator. We take a silent ride down to the surgical wing.
The temperature drops when we enter the frigid, sterile operating room. A chill runs over my body; my lips tremble as gooseflesh buds on my arms.
The surgical team members buzz around the operating room, each doctor or nurse carrying out a specific task. They transfer me from the stretcher to the operating table. An overhead light shines into my eyes while I lay splayed on the table.
A nurse covers me with an extra blanket and stretches tight, white stockings over my calves. She says the stockings will help to prevent blood clots after surgery.
One of the doctors sits down near the table and says he will shave my head. When he asks me if I want my whole head sheared or just the front, I make the mistake of telling him to clip only the front. As a result, weeks after the surgery, my hair remains uneven—bald in front and growing long in the back—similar to the long hair sticking out the back of helmets worn by hockey players with mullets.
After they jab an IV in my arm, I grow drowsy, my eyelids shutting; but before I drift off, I tell one of the nurses that I need to pee. The woman chuckles and says, “Oh, you don’t have to worry about that now. We’ve already put in a catheter.”
And then I leave the world—falling under the power of general anesthesia for about eight-and-a-half hours while the surgeons perform their work.
At Walt Disney World in February 1985.
3.
I have often wondered where I traveled to during that gap of time. What realms or landscapes did I explore in my mind while my skull lay open and I remained unconscious on the operating table?
Here is me stepping out of the story momentarily to travel back in time and investigate the scene. It’s a fantasy of the man I hoped I would become once the surgeons extracted the tumor. It’s the future I had envisioned for myself—marked by maturation and normalcy, playing the role of a fully formed male accompanied by a female partner.
A green canopy of trees. A trilling stream. Sunlight filtering through leaves overhanging a hiking path. Birds chirp, and tree limbs sway in the wind.
Boots touch the soft, muddy earth. A man emerges from a wooded path. He is dressed in a red checkered flannel shirt, tan khakis, and hiking boots, and he carries a knapsack on his shoulders. He is about five feet six inches tall, lean and muscular, and has a slight beard.
A twig snaps, and we see a woman walking out of a clearing. She’s wearing a fleece sweatshirt, jeans, hiking boots, and a backpack. The two figures stride toward one another, share a kiss, and then grasp hands. Sunlight bathes them as they leave the clearing and start walking on a path leading over a ridge. They climb the slight incline and disappear as they walk down the other side, their bodies concealed by the curve of the Earth.
Late high school or early college years.
4.
I wake up in a bed tucked in a corner of the surgical intensive care unit. I feel dizzy, and a dull, continuous ache presses against my head as if my skull is being squeezed in a vice. Nurses inject the opioid Demerol into my thighs over several hours to alleviate the pain, and I keep drifting in and out of sleep. I hear machines beeping and the sound of a respirator somewhere on the floor. The gentle sound of the ventilator puts me at ease as I listen to it—in and out, in and out, in and out.
EKG stickers are pressed to my chest, and machines monitor my heart rate and blood pressure. Vaseline has been smeared on my eyelids and eyelashes, clouding my vision, and I feel like I am straining to see from under the cover of a heavy, wet blanket. The white stockings the surgical team had given me are pulled up to my knees and constrict the circulation in my lower limbs.
I feel small—shriveled up in the bed like a green-gray alien being prodded by U.S. government doctors and scientists on an operating table in Roswell or Los Alamos, New Mexico. A scar runs the entire length of my head, from the tip of my right ear to the tip of my left ear. I tap a slight dent in my skull (produced by a right frontal craniotomy during surgery), about the width of two fingers, just above my forehead on the right side.
The stitches itch, and I reach up to feel the thick, black threads. I wonder if I resemble a twisted version of the Mr. Met mascot.
5.
But I feel relieved because I have awakened from the operation, and my brain function remains intact. Some doctors lean over my bed and ask me a series of questions: Do I know my name, the current year, the president of the U.S., and the name of the city I am in? I answer the questions correctly, and when instructed, I squeeze their fingers, wiggle my toes, puff my cheeks, stick out my tongue, and follow a penlight with my eyes.
My senses function properly, as I can see, hear, speak, and smell. I can form thoughts, and the trauma of the surgery has not altered my mental ability or effaced my memory.
My mother, father, sister, and Aunt Teresa huddle around my bed, their faces beaming like those of Dorothy’s relatives in the scene when she wakes up from the dream at the end of The Wizard of Oz.
“Hey, buddy,” my dad says.
My mom leans over the bed rail, kisses my face and eyelids, and says, “You did great, honey, just great.”
“Yeah, Dr. B. said he got most of it,” Dad says.
“Was it big?” I ask.
My mom holds up her right thumb, indicating the size of the tumor. “It was about the size of a thumb,” she says. She caresses my face and adds, “Dr. B. said there’s a little bit left over, but we don’t need to worry about that now.”
“OK,” I say, closing my eyes and returning to sleep.
High school graduation in 1987.
6.
I wake up on the first night with a raging thirst in my parched throat. I feel like I have been deprived of water for days. But because the doctors are concerned about swelling in the brain, they load me with corticosteroids and restrict my fluid intake. My face is swollen, and I feel bloated from the steroids; I am not allowed to drink water, but I am permitted to suck on ice chips.
However, late in the evening, with the lights dimmed on the floor after visiting hours have ended, I turn my head, look around, and notice a sink in the corner, only a few feet away from my bed.
Somehow, despite being woozy, I lower the bed rail, swing my legs out to the side, and climb out of bed. I try to be quiet as I wheel my IV stand toward the small, stainless-steel sink. I turn on the foot pedal faucet, cup my hands, and gulp the water like it’s rushing in an icy mountain river.
The cold liquid pours down my throat and gives me immediate relief. I want to stay here and drink more water, but a man—a male nurse or an orderly—races toward me and pulls me away from the sink.
“What are you doing?” he yells. “You just had brain surgery.”
He then escorts me back to bed, swings my legs over, covers me with the blankets, and lifts the bed rail.
“Now, don’t get up again,” he says. “What do you wanna do, crack your head open and screw up the work those surgeons did?”
And now tucked back into bed, I resume sleeping, drifting off until the next wave of pain hits, and I press the call button to request another dose of Demerol.
##
Recalling these past forty years, I run a tally of my surgeries at Upstate. The number stands at six—counting the initial surgery in 1984 and the subsequent operations to remove tumor regrowth in 1988, 2011, 2012 (Gamma Knife), 2020 (Gamma Knife), and 2023.
I have some double vision when looking at things up close and to my extreme right (right sixth nerve palsy), and I must be hyper-vigilant in the management of my care to treat my hypopituitarism. But except for my corticosteroid-induced osteoporosis and rheumatoid arthritis (unrelated to the tumor), I am a healthy, middle-aged man.
My next MRI is scheduled for Dec. 18. And with the stubborn resilience of craniopharyngiomas, I know more surgeries (or radiation treatments) loom in the future. But I face each day with gratitude, recognizing how lucky I am to have survived the scalpel on multiple occasions. I also don’t look beyond each six-month window of time between MRIs. Once my current neurosurgeon orders the next MRI, I go about my life without thinking about the tumor still lurking in my head.
Late high school or early college years.
##
And because of the significance of the number 40 on this anniversary date, I’ll leave you with U2 playing “40” live at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado in 1983.
I want to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving. May you and your families be blessed this holiday season. I would also like to share this little poem inspired by a recent trip to the supermarket.
Thanksgiving Dinner
Woman overheard talking on the phone in a grocery store:
“If I’m cookin’ Thanksgiving dinner at my home,
it’s gonna be my mom, my dad, and my kids. That’s it.
I’ll tell her, ‘Look you have a house.
I ain’t cookin’ for you in my little apartment.
Get outta here with that.
Cook your own damn dinner.’”
Francis DiClemente 