For Vince

We met on the first day of middle school. Our homerooms were grouped alphabetically by last name. So, with Romero and Santana he sat right in front of me and was constantly turning around and wouldn’t leave me alone. “What are you doing?” “Why are you doing that?” “I think our grandpas know each other.” “Your uncles know my uncles.” “Your cousins know my cousins.” “We should be friends.” “Actually, we are family.”

I was a nerd, still trying to figure out how to make friends or figure out how to fit in. We learned that we both found required reading boring, and I had gotten my hands on my grandma’s copy of Mario Puzo’s “The Godfather”. Vince was already well along with making friends, and that book felt like my chance to not get left behind, because it had detailed descriptions of ALL sorts things that teenage boys were interested in.

Everyone loved him. His smile. His energy. His athleticism. And then it turned out that he was also a bit of a nerd, but he made it cool to just be yourself and to never apologize for being yourself, and never apologize for also just being nice.

Senior year, a handful of us started a book club and our first pick was “The Stranger”, by Albert Camus, which we didn’t realize was notoriously depressing and existential, and a bit much for seventeen and eighteen year olds, and not exactly uplifting.

Then we tried “Catch-22”, and the more we read it the more we didn’t want to read it. And the more we didn’t want to read it, the more we realized that we were just looking for a way to make sure that we could all stay in each other’s lives after we graduated.

Leaving Utah was one of the most exciting things to me at the time, and then it quickly became one of the hardest. Vince never left my side. He sent postcards in college. He came to visit me in New York. He checked in on my family and reported back to me on how everyone was doing.

I was trying to figure out how to be a man, looking to GQ and to somewhere out there in the world, and it wasn’t hard to realize that I was growing up right next to the best example of one in real time.

Before I left, my grandpa had given me a 1970 Schwinn bicycle, all steel, super heavy. I had spent lots of time fixing it up, and didn’t want anything to happen to it. He pledged to take care of it while I was away, and later on, lugged it along with him to Seattle, and then again across the country to DC, where I was able to get it after ten years. Who lugs a super heavy old bike across the country to reunite it with a friend? Vince.

During those years, he was there for me at some of my darkest times, and I did my best to do the same. I don’t know that we fully exchanged all of the darknesses that we had experienced because eventually we had found new sources of light in the partners we had found.

Hearing about Nadia and eventually meeting her was one of the happiest experiences of my life because I could see how happy she made him and how much she really cared about him and was ready to protect him. Watching them build their life together with so much dedication and discipline and love and respect made it all even better when he shared that Lorenzo was on his way.

It is one of the greatest joys to learn that people you love and respect are bringing new life into this world because you know it is with tremendous love and up to that point you could only imagine how amazing they are going to be as parents.

Then, in a phone call, you get to start seeing it. The baby books, the nesting, and eventually a birthday.

Vince and I loved birthdays and loved acknowledging that it was not just another year alive but a celebration of the fact that we were even born in the first place. I never extended my gratitude the way I have with other parents, so I will extend it now to Greg and Lori for having brought one of my best and longest friends into this world. And when November 22 comes up you can expect to hear from me.

Now imagine how exciting it is to be asked to baptize Lorenzo, during a period when I am doubting everything I am and ever was, whether I even deserve to exist. Vince came busting into my darkness with the giant ball of sunshine that he carried around with him and brought me right back down to earth to remind me who I was, who I am, and who he had never stopped believing in. And he and Nadia entrusted me with trying to set an example for Lorenzo and helping guide him in a spiritual life.

I’m still not sure what to do with this pain that I’m feeling right now, and part of the reason is because I can’t hear him right now. He always knew what to say. He never dismissed anything that I was ever feeling, and never let me forget how much he loved me… and as long as we kept loving ourselves and everyone around us, everything was going to be ok. (To be clear there are lots of different kinds of love and ways of showing it, but as long as it was love that is in our hearts we are going to be ok.)

Right now I feel a lot of anger, because for 25 years my heart and my head have known that Vince is around, and his grandpa knows my grandpa, and we are friends, no actually we are basically family, and my heart and my head are still trying to make sense of the idea that I am here doing this and not at a coffee shop or a bookstore or in his living room playing with him and his two beautiful kids.

We were supposed to keep growing up together and become the grumpy and goofy old men like our grandpas, and dads, and tios. We were supposed to continue the adventures of Dippy and Dunky after breakfasts, laughing over god knows what until our stomachs hurt and we can’t breathe.

It feels especially unfair that Lorenzo and Edilea are going to grow up learning how truly incredible of a man their father was, without actually getting to witness it for themselves. In time, I’m sure we’ll say that he is with us or he is with them, but we know that it is not the same. And we know that it is not what they, or Nadia, or Vince deserve.

I have had a hard time finding words to process all of this, because I still just don’t want any of it to be real.

But if I just stop, for a second, and listen, I can start to hear him again through all of the memories that I have of him. I can hear HIS voice, and I can HEAR him saying “This sucks, man. I’m sorry. I love you man and it’s going to take some time, but everything is going to be ok.”

He showed me what unconditional love and friendship looks like, what relentless hope and kindness looks like, and what it means to show up for anyone in need—and I will continue to strive to be even half the man that he was.

I am so honored and grateful that Nadia asked me to share some words with you all, because I needed to be able to start sharing these memories with people who knew him and so that I can start to hear your memories of him too. Vince was truly one of the greatest humans to have ever grown up with us, or looked up to us, or sat next to us or laughed with us, or believed in us, or loved us.

In time, these memories will become Lorenzo and Edilea’s memories, and we will help each other ease his physical absence, like we are trying to do right now. It will take time and practice and patience and love, but I know we’ll get there. I believe in us, because he believed in us.

I am so grateful to be here with you all as we begin a long road ahead to heal and care for each other.

I am grateful to have had Vince in my life, and to have been even the tiniest part of his, and I am so grateful to know that pure good IS possible in this world, and to have witnessed it firsthand.

---