“Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning.” Psalm 30:5
The weather has been so cold in New Jersey of late with temps in the low to mid-teens and of course we had our first significant snowfall of the year last weekend with accumulations of up to a foot. Shoveling the snow was really challenging with lots of ice settling on our driveway and walkway and making it harder to walk Riley and Cali.
But as I shoveled the heavy snow last Sunday night, I recalled a memorable, painful, yet beautiful moment in time that I had experienced with my Dad and Dennis. The weather was indeed the trigger for the memory and I will always treasure that moment because it was the last time the three of us were together. It was mid-January 1972; I was a junior at Paramus Catholic High School and Dennis was home for the semester break from his sophomore year at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia.
It was a really difficult time for our family as Dad had been out of work since April 1971 with Mom shouldering a heavy financial burden working full time at the Valley Hospital. Cathy and Jack had just gotten married the previous September and were living in an apartment in nearby Rochelle Park. I was increasingly worried that I would have to leave PC because of the tuition bill and would jeopardize my chances of getting recruited to play basketball at Princeton – a dream of mine since I was 9 years old and becoming obsessed with their star player Bill Bradley.
Little did I know until years later that Dennis had already made plans to leave St. Joe’s at the end of the spring semester and would transfer to Fordham University for the fall term. Things were so difficult financially for the family that Dad was looking for anything he could find on the job front and had answered an advertisement to pump gas at the Value Gas Station on Route 17 North in Paramus. Mom and Dad had already exhausted all their savings at this point; had cashed in their lone insurance policy; and Dad’s unemployment insurance had already expired.
Dad soon accepted the job for their 3-11pm shift and so Dennis drove him to the station for what would be the first and only day Dad would ever work at that job. We only had one car back then, a light blue 1966 Ford Mustang coupe. It was a real beauty and a very popular model back in those days, but the heater and defroster never worked very well, especially on that cold and wintry night as heavy snowfall blanketed the entire tristate area just like the one we witnessed this past Sunday.
Dennis and I were worried about getting Dad home as the streets were really icy so at about 10:45pm, we hopped in the car for the short drive to the gas station to pick up Dad and take him home. I can vividly remember sitting in the back seat as Dennis drove the car home with Dad sitting in the front passenger seat, blowing continually on his ice cold hands to warm them up, his nose very runny and his eyes as red and watery as I had ever seen them. It looked as if he had been crying and it made me very sad to see my Dad hurting as much as he was.
In that one moment, I think Dennis and I learned a lot about the emotional toll that unemployment can inflict on a person and on a family. Here was our Dad, 46 years old at the time, with a wife and 5 kids to support, doing whatever he had to do for his family, even if it meant pumping gas at a minimum wage of $2.50 an hour (See Dad’s W-2 for that job). An older son away at college beginning to realize that his dream of living on campus until graduation would not be feasible anymore. And there was yours truly, sitting in that back seat wondering what my own future would be like. Would I be able to graduate from Paramus Catholic – the school I loved — and even be able to go to college myself? Would we be forced to sell the house?
As Dennis pulled the Mustang into our icy driveway at 11:15pm that evening, Dad turned to both of us before getting oit of the Mustang and said, “I don’t think I can do this again and go back tomorrow!” Dennis and I looked at each other and didn’t have to think twice about it — we agreed with our Dad. We did not want to see our Dad have to go through this painful experience ever again. We hoped and we prayed that our Dad would find something better which thankfully he did two months later by securing a new job at The Ridgewood Print Shop. But little did Dad or I know that within 3 short months, we would suffer an even bigger life changing event when Dennis passed away suddenly away at college and all too soon at the age of 19.
Time, they say heals old wounds, but the pain never really disappears. As you move forward in your journey of loss, you learn to look back at painful moments with a different lens, one that you could never understand in real time as that moment was unfolding. But now, 54 years removed from that experience and Dennis’s passing just 3 short months later, a cold and snowy Sunday evening in January 2026 allowed me to honor and treasure with even greater appreciation that special moment when my Dad and his two sons were together for the final time. Sending all my love to Dad and Denny now in heaven together where they will always be and where someday I too hope to join them.
