HMGB-1: A molecule within a cell that plays a role in DNA, but after injury, stress, or cell death, can become damaged, leaking from the cell. It then circulates the bloodstream, where it then transforms into an inflammatory cytokine and binds to other inflammatory cytokines to strengthen them.
CNI-1493: A small anti-inflammatory molecule created by Dr. Tracey in 1992 that has been shown to be a pharmacological method of stimulating the vagus nerve via the cholinergic anti-inflammatory pathway.
Lab Notes:
In 1992, Marina Bianchi joined Dr. Tracey’s lab. They worked together to develop a small molecule called CNI-1493. It has been shown to be more effective than biologics due to the fact that patients do not develop antibodies against it. They spent the next five years exploring the possible uses of their molecule for its anti-inflammatory effects.
Meanwhile, Dr. Tracey continued identifying the immune system’s mediators of inflammation. In 1994, Dr. Tracey and Ona Bloom discovered that macrophages – white blood cells – produce inflammatory cytokines as a result of infection. A cytokine is a protein that is released by cells to communicate with or alter the behavior of other cells. When their search landed on HMGB-1, this confused both Dr. Bloom and Dr. Tracey, because HMGB-1, while a protein, wasn’t considered a cytokine, but instead was a normal component of cells – specifically, it was thought to only play a role in DNA, not in the function of the immune system.
As time passed, Dr. Tracey worked alongside Ulf Andersson and Haichao Wang and discovered that HMGB-1 was, indeed, a mediator of inflammation – and it turned out that HMGB-1 activated macrophages to release other pro-inflammatory cytokines such as TNF. Dr. Wang then developed the monoclonal HMGB-1 antibody. Huan Yang joined the lab in 1999 and discovered that when measured with a control group, mice injected with HMGB-1 developed a disease that aligned with that of severe sepsis, and when given the monoclonal HMGB-1 antibody, 80% of the mice resumed normal function.
This discovery proved that HMGB-1 plays a crucial role in both the development of severe sepsis in patients, as well as a crucial factor in dying from it. Importantly, it was also discovered that injury can cause HMGB-1 to leak from cells that are injured or dying – meaning that Janice’s burn wounds could have leaked an overwhelming amount of HMGB-1 (and other pro-inflammatory cytokines, like TNF) into her already fragile system.
CHAPTER TWO
Family Lore
During my early elementary years, I was a bit of a chunk.
My dad is a type 1 diabetic, and my mom was terrified that his fate awaited me if they didn’t get my weight under control. On my dad’s annual trip to Saratoga to watch the horse races with his boss, I’d always stand in the driveway and cry as he pulled away — I was terrified that he’d go into a diabetic low when he wasn’t at home, which at that time, was a reasonable fear that happened regularly due to the poor quality of insulin at the time. During those lows, his blood sugar would drop into the 20s, he’d get goofy and defiant, refuse to take a shot or his glucose, I’d cry next to him and beg him to, and Kristin would say, “Fine, die. I don’t care. Your choice.” Eventually, Uncle John would come up to the house, towering at 6’7 in the doorway. As my dad smiled a goofy, diabetic grin, my uncle would say in a deep voice, “Timothy, we can do this the easy way, or the hard way.” My dad rarely fought back with Uncle John — the most he would say was “Get outta here, you big son of a bitch,” but eventually, he listened, rebounded, and rarely remembered how bad it was. During his business trips away, I sobbed, scared that his boss wouldn’t know how to handle him.
As I got older, I slimmed out. My dad signed me up for basketball and softball. He knew I had a problem but instead of ever drawing attention to it, he took me outside to play and hike and signed me up for sports. He would take me on hikes through Stokes State Forest along the Appalachian Mountain Range. He’d make somewhat of a game of it, and as I trailed behind, heaving and sweating, he’d gently encourage me, and I’d no sooner get halfway up the mountain with him to look up as he opened up a couple of Rice Krispy Treats for us. We’d stop and clink our treats together like champagne glasses, and after we finished our snack, we’d keep going. Sometimes, he’d undo my calories burnt for the day by taking me out to Sonny’s — the 1950s’ themed restaurant in our town — where we’d sit at the counter and drink milkshakes and eat a hot dog served by a waitress on roller skates while Elvis played in the background.
During my early years of softball, right after we gave up the tee, it was customary for the next step to have the coach from each team pitch to each batter — since obviously, at that age, we certainly weren’t able to throw a successful pitch. I, however, didn’t find the coach to be quite as good of a pitcher as my daddy was — so, in my stubbornness and defiance, out of the stands he’d come.
I was a daddy’s girl through and through — not much older than seven or eight, I’d ride on the back of the Honda Shadow motorcycle, often falling asleep with my hands in the pockets of my dad’s leather biker jacket. He knew when I conked out; as I nodded off, my big black clunky helmet would suddenly clunk the back of his, and he’d give my hands a little pat to wake me up. He also had a 1952 Chevy pickup, candy apple red with a bench seat and a heart-shaped window centered on the back panel, looking out at the pine truck bed where he and my mom would line mums from Ideal Farms to decorate our gardens for autumn. Whenever I was taken to a friend’s house, it was either on the motorcycle or in the old Chevy and whichever one we took out on the town, I was so proud to sit next to him.
As the years passed, I excelled in basketball, softball, and field hockey. I ran track and field, and by the time I was in middle school, I had formed an identity around my athleticism and a community around the friends I made that also played sports. Every summer for years, my cousin Michelle and I — the dynamic duo of the Monk cousins — went to basketball camp together at Morris Catholic High School. Basketball was the core of my pre-Crohn’s childhood — and I was pretty good at it. My dad installed a spotlight on the outside of the garage and every night, I’d run drills from 8 pm until at least 10 pm, or until my parents had to go to bed and couldn’t fall asleep to the pounding of the dribbling on the driveway. Girls’ basketball is a wonderful, terrible thing. It taught me how to elbow my way into what I wanted in life. See, girls’ basketball isn’t just basketball: it’s also a mix of boxing and wrestling. Boys’ basketball is orderly and refined; girls’ basketball is like MMA fighting five-on-five with some rules that are rarely followed and referees who know better than to call every foul, otherwise, we’d spend the entire game at shooting foul shots.
My dad and I went to see the New Jersey Nets on a regular basis; I was crazy about Stephen Marbury and was devastated when Jason Kidd came along and took his place. We went to one game that was for the Nets/Bulls and we were both gut-punched to find that Michael Jordan wasn’t playing that game, but we both got a kick out of Dennis Rodman’s hairdo of the day: dyed yellow with the Walmart smiley face inked in.
By seventh grade, I was mostly solid muscle (with the exception of my boobs, which made their debut around this time). That softball season I hit seven home runs, and as a forward in basketball, I blocked rebounds with force and was known for three-point shots that hardly ever needed the crutch of the backboard to sink in the hoop. I had something to be proud of, something that I was good at, something that was mine. At one point, there was a discussion with the field hockey coach at a private high school in our county for me to attend there on a field hockey scholarship if I continued to have another good season in eighth grade.
While I was the jock, my sister was the beauty queen. At 5’9 by the time she was 14, she was no stranger to Miss Teen New Jersey beauty pageants and modeling agencies who promised the world but never quite delivered, leaving her enraptured in the self-doubt that already plagues young girls, but does even more damage when that young girl is valued most for her beauty. It didn’t always help that my mom has battled eating disorders throughout her life. From a young age, Kristin did as well.
Hillbilly Justice
My mom had a deeply ingrained intolerance for injustice. As little girls, Kristin and I would sit in seat two of the school bus she drove and while it was just the three of us, before she’d picked up the first public school hitchhiker, she’d play songs for us that meant a lot to her. One of them was Another Day in Paradise by Phil Collins. We heard that one often. After it finished, as she wheeled that bus around narrow, twisting country roads, we’d sit in seat two and she’d talk to us about what it meant. I’d watch her from my little seat with my little backpack strapped on, in awe of this woman who I got to call my mom. My mother is striking; she made every other mom look like Archie Bunker. She’s what they call a ‘Black Scot’: dark complexion, dark hair. Her big brown eyes could knock you on your ass. She was so put together all the time; she was such a lady. My mom is something to behold. When I buried my face into her shirts while hugging her, I breathed in her scent of Calvin Klein Obsession and hair spray.
My parents are ideological opposites. As a waitress, my mom used to sometimes give away her paycheck when one of the guys working in the kitchen at the restaurant had a need. She said that “their need for it was greater than ours.”
My dad always said that “charity begins at home.” His point was that if we all take care of what’s happening under our own roof, we are in a better place to care for others in the community, and our community has greater stability because of it.
The thing I’ve learned as I’ve gotten older is that they were both right.
To balance that, with our own ever-revolving door of family tragedy, my mom developed a sense of humor for the irony of life and our own circumstances. Those two things were the main ingredients of our family’s bond with each other; we didn’t see eye to eye on most things and were like oil and water but delivering justice and laughing at the darkness of our own situation were the ties that bind. In the years that followed, my mom could turn an Emergency Room into a comedy club and kept me laughing when other kids would’ve been crying.
By the time I was in 5th grade, my mom was tired of the public-school system and, though we weren’t religious by any stretch of the imagination, she transferred me to the Sussex Christian School. There, I was pleased to find that students wore slippers while on campus — I hated shoes — and there seemed to be an easy air. The classes were small, and all the kids got along. Looking back, it was a pretty cult-y. I enjoyed it, though, and during bible studies, I enjoyed the stories — they seemed to me to be fantastic works of fiction — I didn’t quite realize how seriously everyone else took the stories — but to me, they read like wonderful literature.
That is, until, one day when my teacher took some story in the bible — I can’t remember which one — and decided to do a bit of brainwashing.
She stood at the front of the room and told us that based on this story, “it was clear that black people and Jews don’t go to heaven.”
I was horrified. All the students quietly nodded along. I sat there frozen in fear and shock and didn’t say a word for the rest of the day.
My mom picked me up that afternoon from school and as we made our way down through Sussex and headed toward Wantage, I told her everything that happened that day. I cried and asked her how they could say those things. I shared how everyone just nodded along and I begged her to send me back to Frankford School.
My mom had already been slowly starting to fume, and with that, she spun the car around in the middle of the road and drove back to the school.
When we arrived, she told me sternly, “Wait here.”She got out of the car, went into the school, and moments later, was back outside waiting in front of the car on the sidewalk with her arms crossed in front of her, shaking her head and pacing like she was about to really rip a new one to whoever spoke to her next.
Within minutes, my teacher walked outside. I couldn’t hear what they were saying from my spot inside the car, but my mom was waving her hands around, pointing her finger in the teacher’s face, while my teacher nodded quietly and looked between my mom and the sidewalk, head bent in submission. Finally, mom pointed at the car, and my teacher looked at me, her cheeks bright red. She and my mom walked over to the car; my mom knocked on the window for me to roll it down. With that, my teacher apologized to me profusely.
The next day, I was re-enrolled in Frankford Township School and once again, a happy, secular, public education kid.
I don’t remember that bigot of a teacher’s name, but I’m quite sure to this day, she remembers my mother’s.
Dad delivered his own style of justice on a regular basis as well. Kristin had a tough time in elementary school; prior to her modeling and pageant days, she was teased incessantly for being what the other kids perceived as too nerdy. One kid, in particular, who later said that he did so because he had a crush on her, tormented her with his teasing. Every day she came home from school crying. My parents called the school spoke to the principal — at the time, a woman no taller than 4’11, Mrs. Williams — she wore oversized suit jackets with high padded shoulders. Her neck didn’t quite exist as far as we could see. She was nice enough.
She called dad one day with Kristin in her office, saying that Kristin was being suspended for the day because she gave that kid, Jason, a blood blister the size of a quarter when she pinched him. My dad told her that Jason had been teasing ‘his kid’ for weeks and that the school had done nothing about it, and so, “that little bastard had it coming.”
Mrs. Williams said she was sorry Kristin had been teased but that violence wasn’t the answer and held firm that Kristin was suspended. My dad laughed and said, “Yeah? Well, I’ll be there in a half-hour, and I’m gonna to take her out to lunch. Tell her to start thinking about where she wants to go.”
My dad often mused about how the world was going to hell in a handbasket because kids weren’t allowed to just kick each other’s asses out by the flagpole after school anymore, and he swore that the emotional problems seen in children beginning in the 90s were because of that. He’d say that in his day, kids would get into a fistfight at lunch and be best friends on the way home.
He also had zero tolerance for adults that bullied kids. On one occasion, when Kristin was about eight, prior to when she gave up sports entirely (this was that defining moment for her), he went up to her room and asked her why she wasn’t dressed for her softball game that they had to leave for in ten minutes. She was on her bed, reading a book, and she said she wasn’t going to go because the coach wasn’t going to let her play anyway. He asked what she was talking about, and she said that the coach told her that she wasn’t good, and always benched her. Dad grabbed her uniform and made his way down to Frankford Park, walked onto the field where the game had already started, and went to third base where the coach was standing to guide the batters home. He shoved the uniform in the guy’s chest and told him to “go to hell, you fuckin’ prick,” and that his kid wasn’t playing anymore “because you treat fourth-grade softball like the major leagues.” The umpire got involved, and later that day, my dad got a call from the head of the league, telling him that he would be escorted off the field by police if he ever showed up to another softball game – and that included mine – and my dad laughed and dared them to try.
Dad came to my softball game the following weekend, and no one said a word.
Summer nights
Despite the weird, dysfunctional idiosyncrasies that happened under our roof, my family was tightknit; I don’t think a day ever passed where we weren’t together at some point with Uncle John, Aunt Jen, and Nan down on the farm, along with my cousin Zach when Uncle John had custody. Zach cried every time he had to leave his dad’s house, wrapping his arms around Uncle John, his tiny hands holding my uncle’s big face, asking why he couldn’t just live on the farm with him. I know buddy, I want that too.
On summer nights, we’d gather at the fire pit with everyone else from the valley and listen to country music and tell stories.
Our neighbors were a part of our extended family; when the Hills moved into the valley, across the street from the farm, I instantly took notice of their son Will. We spent almost all our free time together, whether just us or with our families. He called me one day from the middle of the woods, saying that he’d shot a buck and needed my quad to get it back to the barn. Knowing how I felt about hunting, he said to me on the phone “Don’t worry Kel, you don’t have to look at it, but I really need you to come get me... and the buck.” I drove to the edge of the woods where he was waiting for me, he hopped in the driver’s seat, I held onto him from behind, and after dusk, we made it back to his buck. He told me when it was coming up and not to look, and I turned and faced the other way while he gutted it and loaded it on the front racks of the quad — not the back racks. I couldn’t bear to sit next to it.
His mom Vivian had a great sense of humor; one night, we all sat around the campfire and turning on a thick southern drawl, she said, “Two southern women are sitting on a front porch drinking sweet tea. The one southern woman says to the other, ‘You see this bracelet? My husssssband got me this bracelet.’ The other southern woman rocked on her chair and said, ‘Well that’s nice, that’s real nice.’ The first southern woman said, ‘and you see these rings, my husssssband got me these rings.’ The other southern woman kept rocking and said, ‘That’s nice Betty, that’s real nice.’ The first one looked at her and said, ‘Well, what’d your husband get you?’ And the other southern woman said, ‘Well, my husband sent me to Charm School. See, I used to say things like ‘fuck you’ and ‘fuck that’, but now I just say, ‘That’s nice, that’s real nice.’”
Summer nights like these usually included tractor races across what was once the tennis court and in-ground pool at Nan’s and Pop’s, but that Uncle John paved over to put in a riding-ring that never actually came to be. I can still remember the uneven tennis court, running across it with my toddler legs going faster than the rest of me, chasing Mookie, our chow-chow/golden retriever mix, then a pup, from one end to the other, yelling after him in a voice slightly too deep for a toddler, Mooooooooook. And the area of the court that dipped lower than the rest and was always collecting a little puddle of water that I’d jump in and Mook would sip from until someone yelled at him not to. I remember the painfully uncomfortable pavers that lined the in-ground pool, and how little stones in each paver dug into my feet and how it was like some form of punishment to get across them on a hot afternoon.
And then, years later, sitting at a bonfire somewhere in the middle of memories of where those toddler feet once ambled, and racing tractors the length of a history I’ve spent my life trying to overcome.
Those nights were filled with laughter and stories and history — my family loved telling stories of the good old days. My dad’s go-to stories always seemed to revolve around him and his Denville crew in their glory days kicking someone’s ass — but in the stories, he was the hero that only kicked ass for justice. It always seemed to me that the 1970s in New Jersey were some kind of disco-themed extension of the Wild West, serving up justice in the form of broken noses and ass-kickings while wearing bell-bottoms and listening to the Bee Gees. He enjoyed recanting the story of the time he was going out to the club with his buddies — his brother, Joe, his best friend Mickey, and the troublemaking ‘Flynn Brothers’ of Denville — and he went into his younger brother Mike’s closet to borrow a shirt. In protest, Mike yelled and said that he had just saved up for that shirt and that undoubtedly, my dad would ruin it — to which my dad scoffed and laughed and said it was just a shirt and it’d be fine.
That night, my dad boogied on the dance floor alongside a young woman he had just met when her boyfriend came over to the dance floor and dragged her away. Dad kind of shrugged it off, not realizing she had a boyfriend and let it go, when he saw the guy drag her into a corner of the club and smack her.
Dad already had a cast on his right arm from a previous fight where he intended to punch someone in the face, they moved, and his fist landed in a brick wall, so what better time to get into a fight than now, right? It was in the name of her honor.
He walked over, tapped the guy on the shoulder, and lifted his cast in the air and smashed it down on the guy’s nose, blood shooting like a rocket from that guy’s nose to his brother Mike’s brand-new disco shirt. Other guys started to get involved, my dad’s crew joined in, and as he describes it, he just flung his hard, plaster cast in every which direction until eventually the bouncers broke it up and threw the other guys out — but not Tim Monk and the boys — next round was on the house.
When my dad returned home that night, practically bare-chested, he handed over to his brother the last bloody shred of disco shirt that was left.
Outside of New Jersey’s disco scene existed the flip side of the coin — one that packed fewer actual punches, but was nonetheless, also tough as nails. My maternal grandfather — my ‘Poppy’ — was a simple guy just short of high school education. He and his brother had already spent their childhood up at 4:30 am to take care of the cows and the farm, and then go off to school, but when their father had a heart attack when Pop was 17, he dropped out of school to work the dairy farm full time. When America became involved in World War II, he and Albert went to sign up to serve their country, but only Al ended up going — Pop’s scars on his back prevented him from joining. As a kid, he jumped on the back of a milk truck to be goofy and hitch a ride down the road (and make his friends laugh), but fell off the back of it, and spent months in bed with a broken back.
Stories I am told of him include the time he forbade my uncle to go to Split Rock Reservoir to swim because of how dangerous it was — only to find out that he did, indeed, go, and how he ‘helped’ Uncle John up the driveway when he made it home safely. I guess the concept was that if Split Rock wasn’t going to kill him, Poppy would. I remember so very little about him, but his uproarious laugh is seared into my memory, and the depth of his voice — his voice was like weathered, smoky leather — it had a Pennsylvania Twang and a grittiness that enraptured the air around him.
One of my favorite Poppy stories was the one about Father Livolsi building a boat. Father’s Catholic sanctuary was up the hill from the farm — as we’d come over the hill on Wantage Avenue, we’d pass Father Livolsi’s on the right, and within a second, the view of the entire 12 acres of farm was before us. In the early years, my mom would sing Chitty Chitty Bang Bang as we went over the hill, and we’d join in, giggling, my heart dropping into my belly, and feeling like the car was going to fly off the road and right into the driveway of the farmhouse.
Across the street from the farmhouse was Father Livolsi’s pond, the same one where my dad taught me to fish. In the center of the pond was a small island. When Pop was still alive, he and Father Livolsi were quite the pair — my Scotch Presbyterian grandfather and an Italian Roman Catholic priest seem more like the butt of a ‘two guys walked into a bar’ joke than the friendship they shared. I can still hear Father Livolsi’s voice, how it boomed with his thick Italian Jersey accent and how his eyes shined when he smiled.
One day, Pop looked out from the farm and saw Father Livolsi across the street, at the pond with his dog, struggling with something. He walked through the high grass in his 70s-style flare jeans and V-neck baby blue tee shirt and found Father Livolsi trying to get a boat — more like a wooden raft — into the pond. Father stopped and stood with Pop, who looked at it and said, “There ain’t no way in hell that thing is gettin’ over to the island — it’s got no ballast, Father.” With that, Father Livolsi shrugged at Pop and told him it would, indeed, float, and pushed it into the pond. Always dressed in his best cassock and with his dog by his side, he and the dog carefully stepped onto the ‘boat’ — and only seconds later, while standing and trying to paddle with a long tree limb, the boat began to sink. Father’s arms went in circles around his body trying to propel him up toward the heavens, and he yelled out “LORDY LORDY!” while Pop fell over from laughing so hard. There are such few things I remember about him — but his voice is unforgettable, and his laugh, unmistakable. I lived for these stories where I could take what I knew of him — his smile, his voice, his laugh — and match it with real events by the people who remembered him for so much more.
When Pop died of ALS in 1994 in the wee hours of the morning of April 13th, Nan called Father about an hour later to share the news, to which Father responded with, “HOW LONG AGO DID IT HAPPEN SHIRLEY?” and Nan said, “About an hour,” and Father exclaimed “IT’S NOT TOO LATE!” and came barreling down the hill with his oils and gave his Scotch Presbyterian friend his Last Rights as a Catholic.
One night at one of our regular bonfires at the farm, we watched as a small pick-up truck slowly moved down the hill from Father Livolsi’s. When it reached the farm driveway, it pulled in. Will and I stayed by the fire while the adults walked over to see who it was, only to find that it wasn’t anyone we knew — it was a man who had tried to slit his wrists and changed his mind and was in need of help. I remember being told about it later and how my uncle helped him, how Vivian said to him “Well, if you really wanted to kill yourself, you didn’t slit them in the right direction,” and I remember thinking about how a man dying of brain cancer helped a man that had only minutes before chose to end his life.
Through sharing stories of glory days and days long gone and binding together as a tribe of people from our hill and valley, we often were able to find joy and humor, but the darkness of our crumbling family was ever-present. Soon after my uncle was diagnosed, my mom began drinking. It started as she’d drive him to the city for chemo, and while he was getting his infusion, she’d go down to the pub downstairs. I was never mad at her; from an early age, I understood: her brother was dying. In the mornings, I sat at the breakfast counter eating my cereal before school and I’d watch as my mom started her mornings on the other side of counter by filling up four Poland Spring water bottles 3/4 with Absolut and 1/4 with Ocean Spray cranberry juice, getting ready for her workday as nonchalantly as though she were just packing a lunchbox. I wasn’t mad at her; I just felt sad that she was in so much pain. I did my best to pretend that this was normal.
At night, I’d sit in my bedroom and hear her on the deck below my window, crying. I’d either prop up my karaoke machine next to the open window or bring it directly downstairs to the deck and plug it in and sing to her. She’d sit in the darkness, face swollen from crying, smiling, as I belted out Sara Evans or Martina McBride or Gretchen Wilson, hoping that each note I hit would somehow erase one tear.
I learned early on to withhold my emotions from the people around me; their emotions were so intense and so apparent at all times that instead of adding my own to the mix, I tried to navigate easing theirs. I attempted and failed, at being the peacekeeper. I tried to be the comedian to lighten the energy, and often failed at that too — yet those roles gave me time to navigate my thoughts on my own, and for that, I am grateful. I found time for what I was feeling when I was lost in the woods, and I stumbled upon my voice in my pen. The first poem I wrote is called The Smile I Wear — my 7th grade English teacher submitted it to a poetry anthology for young poets, and I remember being thrilled when I got the hardcover. As I flipped through it, though, I found that my poem was quite unlike the rest — while others took on the haiku, I took on a more lyrical and gothic tone that was slightly beyond the years of the rest. I was still happy to have been a published poet, but also slightly embarrassed at letting anyone in to see what I was really thinking.
Those fears were confirmed when I came home — we had dinner at Nan’s that night, and I shared the book with my mom and Aunt Jen. My aunt was comforting and commented on how beautifully written it was, but my mom felt crushed by the idea that her 12-year-old wasn’t completely happy with her life.
“This is how you feel?”
I remember disappointment pouring from her and quickly retreated into the role I knew how to play.
I didn’t often let anyone in; internalization and I came to an understanding, and it was that my pain would only add to the pain of the people I loved — and I couldn’t bear to witness more, to feel more. For many years, I struggled with recognizing when I was feeling someone else’s pain or when I was feeling my own. Sometimes, I still do.
I kept writing — poems would ooze out of me. They weren’t some planned event, nor could I just sit down and decide to write a poem — no — the poems themselves decided when they’d be written, and I better grab a pen and keep up. Sometimes I’d grab a notebook, a book of poetry I was reading, and steal a couple of my mom’s Virginia Slim Menthol Lights and take the quad to the tallest tree stand and climb up and smoke and read and write and get enveloped in the breeze and the summer sun and the hayfields singing and feel completely at peace. I’d watch Father Livolsi putter around the sanctuary grounds, and I’d wonder about his life story leading up to this point, which I knew nothing of, and as a 12-year-old, certainly wasn’t going to ask him directly about — but I knew his story must’ve been something.
He died on February 16, 2008, the same day as his 85th birthday. I filled in some of the gaps when I read his obituary, but I’m still filled with those unanswered questions that would’ve been nice to know – the depths of someone’s soul that an obituary can rarely capture – but my memories of him are enough for me, too.
Listen to the vibe:
Tell your friends:
Chapter three coming your way next Sunday morning at 7 am!
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