Final Curtain

[Comments I was so honored to deliver at Tony Gadberry’s service of remembrance yesterday.]

Helen Keller, a woman of great insight, observed: “Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.”

That is the task laid out before us today as we grapple with the death of one of us, a young man who holds a special place in each of our hearts in so many different ways.

If there is one thing we know about teen-aged boys, it is that they truly and honestly and earnestly believe that they are invincible. No harm can possibly come to them under any circumstances. They jump from heights we later learn not to scale. They ride their skateboards down steep asphalt slopes, crossing through busy intersections with reckless abandon, only to then find a post-office handrail that will suffice as a half-pipe until it’s time for lunch.

As age advances, we learn to cautiously ride a car’s brake down the slightest of slopes. We use the post-office handrail as it was intended. We carefully look around our feet for hazards that might endanger the very act of standing up from the couch.

“Look, Ma!” we once yelled, “No hands!”

The progression continued with, “Watch this!” And, finally (maybe) with, “Hold my beer!”

These stages of development, depending on countless factors, are usually completed before one becomes a father. (In my early development I got as far as “Look, Ma!” before crashing my bicycle into a very sturdy oak tree. It provided the inspiration for most of my later adventures being realized through reading books. It also provided a scar on my forehead.)

Tony had many adventures through reading books as well. Books entertained him; they taught him things; they augmented the too-few real-life experiences—as well as those on the Internet—that he hadn’t time to amass during a too-short lifetime.

Tony was a talented kid with a musical aptitude that, given more practice and instruction, might have led to virtuosity; he might have thought he was already the 21st Century Vladimir Horowitz.

He was so looking forward to the real-life adventures that awaited him during planned trip to Japan with our town’s Sister City program. He carried his phrasebook with him wherever he went. And there seemed like a little romance might be developing with one of the Japanese girls he had met this past summer.

He was a smart kid and he was the first to let you know that. He was relentless in his defense of whatever argument he proposed, whatever theory he posited—even well after having been proved wrong.

He verily defined precocious; he had attitude in all caps, a certain panache about him; he had moxie and charm, and a smile that won over us all; he had chutzpah; he was countrified urbane, and he actually liked wearing a suit and tie; he was witty with a certain sense of savoir faire (I’m not even sure what that means, but it’s French and Tony would have liked the sound of it, as do I). He had that…ready for some more French?… certain je ne sais quoi.

Tony could be exasperating. He could be a royal pain in the rear and it didn’t matter because we loved him and found him to be full of laughter and promise.

He had a profound love of his morning coffee, as long it was eight parts vanilla cream to one part sugar and a tablespoon of actual coffee. It was his connection to the adult world, a world he wanted so desperately to join. He wanted to grow up on a schedule of his own devising; he had not the patience for childhood, which may have been his biggest fault.

Geri, of course, adored Tony and she would regale him with stories of her childhood in Ireland. He loved her stories of learning Gaelic from priests in the outlawed hedge schools, the bizarre superstitions that make the Irish, well, Irish, and the elfin fairies who lived in the mulberry bushes as much as he loved Geri. Courtney joined in the choruses of Irish praise.

Tony decided that Trinity College Dublin—he had seen pictures of the library and had learned from Courtney that Bram Stoker and Oscar Wilde had studied there—would be where he should go to school. He applied for admittance. He was eleven. Sean intercepted a call from an administrator at Trinity who needed more information to complete Tony’s application.

I’m not sure if the teacher who assigned Tony to interview someone he admired is here today, but if he or she is, I want to let you know I had nothing to do with it, proof being that I knew nothing about this story until yesterday afternoon.

I am flattered to have learned that Tony chose me to be the subject of the assignment, but he didn’t interview me. He figured that he knew everything about me, that I might be too busy being as famous as he thought I was to bother being interviewed, and that if there were any gaps in his story he could just make stuff up.

Apparently, he was an early adherent of fake news. Fox missed its chance at landing some real talent.

Tony had a great laugh—a laugh that pealed through whatever room he might be occupying at any give moment. Since he seemed to have no filter between his brain and his mouth, his screeching howls were frequent and never unexpected.

He didn’t think he screeched. He settled for the descriptive: Squawked.

Tony was a remarkable young man with great promise. He had a gang of great young friends; they skateboarded together, they shared their stories and dreams and fantasies, they fought their little battles, competed at video games, texted without pause, even while sitting across from each other at the same table. I believe Tony would charge you—his fine young friends who are here today—to continue your lives and to continue to chase those dreams that he never got to see reach fruition.

He loved his family and friends and I believe he would want us to keep each other close in every way possible.

Life without Tony will go on. We will somehow endure the loss and cling tightly to the memories we have, while always wondering about what a more complete life would have brought.

And the laughter will return.

Photography by Courtney A. Liska

Note: These are the moments that those of us who live in small communities are most thankful that we do. We come together with casseroles and covered dishes, jugs of iced tea and lemonade, pots of strong black coffee, hugs and kisses, and we tell our brief stories of relationships and loss. Our differences and our defenses drop to the side and we ask quite sincerely what any of us might do for the other.