Tommy did it again. He pulled another practical joke on me. He's been doing this for a very long time, but recently he's had a thing about my earrings. He's like Houdini – one minute I have those earrings in my hand, and the next, POOF! One of them is gone.
Thing of it is, Tommy's been dead since 2007. You'd think his jokes would have gone with him.
We knew the summer of 2005 that he might be seriously ill. He was having trouble with his throat.
He beat the cancer without surgery but he couldn't beat the liver disease that slowly destroyed him two years later.
At first I thought it was one of his practical jokes. He lost his sense of direction and wanted me to go the most bizarre ways to his home after his treatment in the hospital.
He gave me weird instructions like, “Go south on Lake Shore Drive. (He lived north.) “I know a short-cut. Go to 294.” I ignored him. I wanted to know what the joke was. It wasn’t though. It was the poisons not getting filtered from his liver properly. He died a few months later.
I can't begin to describe how devastating it was to watch Tommy die during his favorite time of year, the Christmas season. Family surrounded his bed, crying, telling stories and watching his heart slowing down. Mickey, our oldest brother, thought we should wave our goodbyes to him at his final heart beat. You know, get that last joke in on Tommy. As we turned to wave, crying and carrying on, he returned once again. We couldn’t contain ourselves; that was Tommy. He wouldn't let us have that final joke on him, no sir. He left us, hearing our laughter instead of our cries.
Tommy was like that. Joking around, smirk plastered on his gaunt face. His death should have ended it. Yet here I am, telling you about other practical jokes Tommy played on me.
It started right after we had services for him. We had him cremated, giving his ashes to his boys and saving some for mom's grave and his favorite – the White Sox ball park. I went home a bundle of nerves, missing him, wishing he had given up those final months of drinking that probably sealed his fate. Why was he able to beat the cancer and not taken advantage of that great gift of life? He should have lived! He could have lived! Those thoughts kept playing, over and over in my heart.
The next day, my keys were gone. I always placed them in the same spot, on the laundry table, as soon as I entered the house from the garage.
I moved all the stuff around and finally off the table, but I couldn't find my keys. This went on for three days. In frustration I yelled out to Tommy.
“Please return my keys!”
My daughters stood in the laundry room with me when we heard a “bling.” First a White Sox token fell to the floor. I didn't know I even possessed a White Sox token.
I looked at them and said, “Oh my God, if my keys fall to the ground like that, I know Tommy did it.”
We almost jumped a foot off the ground as sure enough, my keys fell to the ground. I think they may have been stuck to a towel but what had I just said? Wasn't that proof that Tommy did it??
During these past few years, Tommy demonstrated again and again that he's around. Earrings fall, disappear and turn up a day or two later. One earring was gone for a year! I learned to never throw away that single earring because the other one would surely turn up.
On my daughter's 32nd birthday, we were sitting around the kitchen table when all of a sudden, one of my granddaughter's toys began to play. The only way it goes on is when you press the candles on its top. Since Tommy always called his family with birthday greetings, we knew it was Tommy. Besides, it was candles!
The next day, after a full day of constant mini-searches, I gave up but my husband didn't. He began the search again, looking in the drawers, behind the desk - everywhere.
After my shower I opened the drawer and in plain view, there's that earring! I screamed. When my husband saw it, he was converted. He told me he finally believes.
Tommy is my forever jokester. I guess I'll learn to live with it.
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