transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] All right, guys, we are a different episode, a little send-off. We just did one of these for Uncle Russ a few months ago. This week for Step Dead, Jack Cassidy. I've got some notes, we'll see. Last time was a mess having to mute in and out with Russ and say, you know, good news, I just had a total freaking breakdown in the car and had to pull over, so maybe we'll be dry for the next 20 minutes and get through it. But, yeah, this has become like my little therapy session, my little, I don't know, paying over specs, I guess you could say. So yeah, my stepdad, the voice will crack too, so you can get your memes ready. Typically, we got to start with this, just a typical Boston, I was going to say Boston sportsman, Jack was literally the typical Boston person. I mean, his name was John Joseph Cassidy. So right off the bat, just like the triple, just the Irish through and through. I'll get into some of the other crap too, but yeah, just that was the first thing that comes to mind. And the typical Boston fan, no matter what the Patriots did, super hopeful every year, because we had a ton of success, and no matter how good the Red Sox played, it was just like the epitome of, oh yeah, but they're going to screw it up and bail. And same with the Celtics, as soon as Bird left town, the old guys were just done. He would have been 76 this year, so he was just from that old school of basketball. It's terrible. And the Bruins, it was just, I hate the Jacobs brothers, and the ownership is terrible whenever we're going to spend money. But yeah, just like the stereotypical Boston guy, which was just so perfect for him. Born in 1950, he was with me for about 30 years. You know, I talked to my dad too, very little. I haven't talked to much of the family, quite frankly, other than like his family that's been here. As responsible for my upbringing, maybe even more so than Papa Gio, and Gio knows that. Jack was there day to day for almost my whole life. So yeah, just a little bit about him, and then we'll, again, crazy enough, and it does kind of tie in, which it always does with me, the card connection. It's amazing how anybody who's close, cards, the hobby, cards, cardboard, have literally been woven in and out of our relationship over the past 30 years. Matter of fact, I'll just start with that story. They got married when I was like 13 or 14. He comes home, he knew I was into cards because back then collecting hardcore, he would take me to card shops even. After a couple of weeks of that, he at one point, he takes me, he meets me at the door. I get off the bus from school. I must have been eighth grade. Get off the bus from school, I'm ready to walk in the house, do whatever. Meets me at the door and he's like, hey, I was looking through your cards and I noticed, and I remember you saying, some of your, like if they're autographed, they're worth more money. I was like, yeah. And he's like, well, and autographs were not a big thing. Probably had a couple back then, like nothing, not like they are now. He's like, well, I thought to help increase the value. And he had a freaking pen, because he was such an idiot with a sense of humor. He has a pen in his hand. He's like, I went ahead and just signed the names of a bunch of these other people. I think it was Alex Rodriguez was my guy back then. I signed all the A-Rod cards, so they'd be worth more. And he's just standing there grinning ear to ear and I don't know him that well, he just got married. I freaking launched my backpack and go sprinting upstairs to our little apartment, because I was terrified. And I'm sitting on the floor like an idiot, just thumbing through, I gotta find these cards, which ones are ruined. And Jack comes walking in a minute later, just what he was known for his laugh, just the most infectious, annoying belly laugh you ever heard in your life. Just laughing at me, because he knew he just screwed up my whole week thinking my card collection was ruined. That is like my earliest memory of him, actually, of us moving in together, when he moved in with me and my mom. I've talked about a little of this, I know some people have reached out to, there's a reason I've been taking so much time off work. He got a pretty savage diagnosis. So like 10 weeks ago, he got diagnosed with, he was having some almost like stroke-like symptoms. I don't know. We took him to the hospital, spent a day or two. So yeah, we found something, we do a little biopsy, and we'll see what it is. It comes back, so this would have been about 10 weeks ago, with I think it's called geoplastoma, I don't know, geoplastoma, whatever, brain cancer. And again, just like so stereotypical to his personality, we're sitting in the room, so it's me, him, my wife, and his wife, my mom, of course, the four of us sitting there. Then we get on speakerphone as kids, his son, his daughter. And the lady gives us this horrific, just you've got six to eight months with no treatment, you got one to two years with heavy chemo, radiation, and with surgery. So if we go that route, brain surgery immediately, we'll do a, I don't know, they'll cut a bunch of the crap, I forget what it's called, cut a bunch out. Then we'll do chemo, radiation. That may get you one to two years. And I remember, I've never seen anything like this. He literally was just, he like reached out to her and was like, I'm so sorry, like this, are you okay? This is like such horrible news to have to deliver. And I was like, what is wrong with this guy? I didn't think that, I knew what was wrong with him. He was a super kind person, but he was like just making sure she was okay, delivering the news, which was unbelievable. I respected that too, right off the bat, there was no question. It was, no, I'm good. Give me six good months as opposed to one or two years of absolute hell. Anybody who's been through chemo or seen people, absolute hell. He didn't want that, just Celsius, by the way, my camera's off. It's only Celsius right now, so no need to worry. Which I admired too, right off the bat, like, hey, I'm going to go out of my terms. That was his thing. What's crazy was how fast this thing progressed. I mean, within a few weeks, he was, okay, need to start slowing down. Hey, maybe we need a walk or maybe we need to get a ramp put in. And then, yeah, this past weekend, it just went super, super fast downhill. And even then, just no fear, no hesitation. Just like, hey, this is it, ready to go to sleep. Like, I am totally content with, you know, I just kept saying that to no regrets or family. As you often hear, waited for his family to come down, which was great. Son and daughter got here for the last day or two. So we all got some time together, which was nice. I mean, again, just to the point of joking. Like, so I shared that card story with him, which we would share that once a month. Cause again, typical old Boston guy, he had 10 jokes in his repertoire. And we heard those every, every fricking week. The other thing though that happened when I was super young with him, there's an awesome bakery in town, Tripoli's Bakery, whatever. At some point that day, I don't know, my mom went and got a piece of cheesecake cause Jack loved to eat. He liked food more than he liked anything else on the earth. And so he gets this piece of cheesecake. He's all pumped to get home and eat it. I didn't know that it was his. So I just get home as a teenager, I start stuffing my face about halfway through. I'm like, this cake sucks. I don't even want it. He gets home and you've never seen a grown man want to cry more. And he's like, is that the, that's the cheesecake? I was like, yep. I was like, oh, he was like, it's the last piece. They don't even have any more. I was like, you know what? I wasn't even going to finish it. And all of a sudden, it got much more freaking appealing. I told him that story Saturday morning before we checked him into the facility. And he, we're laughing and crying and laughing, whatever. I tell that story, he literally just goes, you dink. Like, even down to the end, he'd never forgive me for that cheesecake, which I just thought was amazing. Yeah, anyways, I don't know where it was going. Actually, I knew where it was going. That was the story. Those were the moments we had. The other thing was funny about him too, just to bring it back to the hobby like everything else in my life. I moved out when I was 18, then came back for a year when I got engaged with Hannah. Moved back in with him and my mom, which he was welcoming back with open arms, saved up some money, moved back down, got married, hadn't been back since. They moved down to Tennessee though about three years ago. I bought a place, they were able to live in that, which was awesome. Having them close again, which thankfully, I mean, had I known, didn't have a lot of time, I would have done it years ago. But that was a feat. Anybody who has family from the Northeast, specifically Boston, you know, like I'm 40 next week. My parents' generation, that generation of Bostonians do not leave ever. I always joke they're content to just stay home and be miserable, and kind of unhappy. He was happy, but like be miserable with the snow, and with the weather, and the crappy roads, and the no central AC, and all this other stuff. Rather than just, hey, come move to Nashville. Like it's a great place. I got an awesome spot. I put you guys. Anyways, three years ago, they finally did move down, which was again, just such an amazing feat to get him out of here. His biggest concern with moving across country, and I think he lived in Massachusetts his whole life. I don't think Jack ever lived there. I know he was born there. I don't think he ever had lived out of state ever. He was like, I could tell something. I was like, what's going on? He's like, I'm just worried. I'm thinking, oh, he's worried about, you know, are they going to like the place? Are they going to like the climate? Whatever, some major life development. I'm just worried I'm not going to be able to understand these people. The southern accent, which I was like, it's Nashville. We don't live with the sticks. There's hardly any Rednecks left, but that was. That was Jack's big worry moving down here. Like, am I going to be able to understand what's going on? That and the food. He's like, you know, I just want to make sure there's good restaurants. There's places I can go. And he did. That was like a sticking point to the very end. He loved his food, which was funny. But he would, even when he was back home, he would call me. I bet once a month, once every two months, him and my mom would go yard sailing or an estate sale just to kill some time. Hey, I bought a box of cards, 10 bucks for a big shoe box. Next time you come up here, we'll have to look through. He had no, the man had no interest in cards at all. Huge sports fan, but zero interest in the hobby or cards and didn't care about it. He knew that was my livelihood and my big, you know, my obsession the last 20 years of my life. But again, went out of his way to, oh, I got this card. Hey, next time you come, we'll sit around the table, we'll eat and drink and whatever. You can go through the card. See if we see if we struck gold. That was his big thing. See if we struck gold. See, even like that, as a young guy too, even before I was driving, he would drive into the LCS and just come in and kind of just walk around. You know, like you're stereotypical, like the dad who has no interest in it, but he's like, I got to put up with this because my kid likes it. So yeah, so that was his thing. So Saturday is when things really... Friday night went really down. He really fell again. That was becoming a pretty common thing at the end. He was just losing his physical faculties. And so that was Saturday morning. We got the text, hey, we're starting the morphine at home, which thankfully, I will tell you this too, hopefully you're not dealing with this. If you have a family member that's struggling, hospice is the greatest service of the history of the earth. Like they are unfreaking believable. Hospice came in last Monday and we're just like, hey, we take care of everything. We're not saying he's gonna die in a week. We'll give you six to eight months, great. But they did every, like the nurse showed up. My mom did everything, I should say. But hospice was like, hey, if you need a wheelchair, okay, we'll get it here. You need this, you know, whatever it is, doesn't matter. We'll take care of everything. And they even leave you a care package, which was great. Like, you know, here's some, call us before, but if you need to administer it for the pain, take that. True to form too, Jack was always opposed to like ibuprofen or Tylenol his whole life. But at the end, he's like, you know what? Let's just go right for the morphine, which I don't blame him in the least. So we got the text Saturday morning, hey, we're starting the morphine. And again, I've been around that enough. I just got through with Russ, my grandparents in the past, like I've seen enough people, you start morphine, that's the end of the road. But it was perfect. Like 10 weeks on a six month diagnosis, terrible. But it was legit, like 10 good weeks. Literally had a conversation with me, with mom, with his kids, with everybody before he went, and it was the same. He's like, I'm good. Like, that's it. I have no regrets. Happy with everything. You often hear that too, like that will to live. Like that dude was not dying. And I told him, I had a conversation with Russ a month before this, although Russ went, that was the other huge difference. Russ went suddenly. We were there the night before with both these people, by the way, with Russ, we were over there playing the night before. But then the next day he had a stroke, never regained consciousness. He did not have a DNR at the time. We put him on the tube and that whole horrible process. With Jack, he was aware. Like, it went quick, but he was aware the whole time. He made the decision of when he wanted to go. But we were there the night before with Theo, which that was awesome. Like, he was there when Theo was born, you know, swimming and wrestling with my, you know, with that kid was like half of his life here. We were there every day. And he, again, not as much at the end, but he loved wrestling. Even when I was a kid, we would wrestle. We had a second floor apartment in Bradford, Massachusetts, just north of Boston. I was telling my brother and sister the story this week, probably 15 years old. And Jack was a bigger guy. Even back then, he was in shape. He was still probably 6'6, 1 and 200 plus pounds. And I was a scarny little geek. So we're wrestling. I don't know how to progress so much, but we literally knocked over the freaking love seat in almost, and like I knocked, I remember distinctly knocking the screen off the window. That's how hard we hit the window. And just about the two of us idiots went out the window, which was just, would have been fitting. Like that's how we both went, just fall and break our backs, the two morons. Anyways, that was this thing with Theo too, just wrestling in rough house with him and playing. But yeah, I will say the comfort in getting the last few days with Russ, he was like, he's gone, he's still with us for a week, but he doesn't know where he is. Like it was that made that rough. This was like, hey, I'm going to stick around. And the point I was making, I told Russ at the time too, like whatever I have to do to help you, you tell me. But with Jack too, I was like, hey, you've got this self-morphine kid here, bro. You've been good enough to me and my mom and your whole family. He just had a good visit with all the kids in FaceTime anyways. I was like, if you don't want to go to this facility, I will, I'm going to give you this morphine. Like I'll put it next to you. You do what you got to do. Like there's no judgment here. Like you've earned the right to do whatever you want. And he didn't. He says, you know what? Let's hold off. Let's get the kids down here. Everybody flew in. So that was Saturday morning. Sister and her husband flew in Saturday night, so did his son. Yeah, everybody got here in time. We had some good times Saturday. The greatest story of all time. Honestly, the last conscious moment we have with him. So Sunday morning, by the time Sunday rolled around, he was still on like light morphine at the hospice facility at this point. And his son, so his eyes were not really open anymore. Saturday, he was still talking even in the evening. By Sunday, it was like he kind of squeezed your hand or he'd give you a nod or something. That was about it. Sunday, the four of us were standing around, five of us. So his son, his daughter, my brother-in-law, and me and Hannah. And David, my brother's name, he's telling the story of when he was a kid, and David's 49, I think he said. So this is 40 years ago. He says, yeah, dad, you remember that? Because we were always taking turns. It was like the perfect pattern. Tell a story, everybody sob, laugh. Tell a story, sob, laugh. So David's turn comes up. And maybe he was first, I don't remember. He says, yeah, there was a time in, I think it was middle school and playing basketball, you forgot to come get me. And so I had to walk home in the snow, and you drove past me twice. You know, did you not get me? Then I'm walking home, you drive past me twice. And literally the last time I saw Jack, a sign of life, we stayed with him till the end, but the last time he just slowly lifted his head and started waving like, yup, I saw you and I waved and just kept on driving. And it was, it was perfect. And then after that, I was like, hey, let's start the heavy doses. And he's, he's, you know, physically here a little bit, but that's it. He's, he's gone. But yeah, didn't, he didn't linger enough where, you know, because again, some of that gets miserable. You know, you linger six, eight months, but the last three months, it's you're totally incapacitated and someone's caring for you. He didn't want that. He was not the type of guy who wanted to be taken care of like that. And he was on like a crazy strict diet. Honestly, that was as painful for him as the cancer. My mom is an awesome cook, and she used to spoil him with food for the last 30 years of marriage or 25 years of marriage anyways. I'm telling you, enforcing a strict diet would have been worse than chemo for the guy. Yeah, it was great. Last Friday night, we actually went out to Mexican. He just stuffed his face. All of us just sat on the table like kids, just stuffing our faces. It was perfect. But yeah, like I said, the hobby has always been a little constant tie-in with me and him too. Which I said this with Russ, I'll say this. Sadly, when my old man goes, I'm going to say this with Jack going. It is a perfect bond of, we don't always talk well, myself included. We're terrible communicators. It's that perfect, especially the older we get, it seems like. It's just like sports are, it's just a niche of that. Hey, what's this Larry Bird? He ain't come over our house all the time. What is this Larry Bird card on the shelf? Tell me about that or whatever. And it's just like a perfect, I don't know, not icebreaker because the ice has been broken, but it is like this perfect little bond, little unifying conversation piece, and the ludicracy of it. Like Jack would laugh. I'd tell him about, you know, hey, we signed up, you know. He would laugh at the card side of it in the first place. You know, you sold a card for what? This is, you know, ridiculous, and just laugh. And then, oh, you're getting paid what? To just talk about, it's nerdy enough, selling cards. Now you're just talking about selling cards. That's a whole nother level of nerd. And he would just laugh and disbelief about that, which was perfect. So, yeah, that's really about it. I don't know. I will say the one big reflection for me, again, I'm the same way too. I've been in Nashville almost 20 years, still a typical Bostonian. There's a quote from the movie The Town. Ben Affleck goes and talks to Jeremy Renner, and he says something like, hey, I need you to come with me. We're going to hurt some people. You can't ask me about it. That's it, and he looks, and Renner just says something like, I forget exactly, who's car are we going to take? Whatever. That's it. The last, I don't know, 45 days especially, there's like Jack was one of those people for me. Not in a violent way by any means, but hey, I need this. Yeah, when? That's it. Just, I don't want to call it blind loyalty and make it sound cheap because it wasn't, but just that staunch loyalty to his family. I had that with Russ too. Russ was like that with me. Russ would do anything to help. Jack would do anything to help. It did. That stupid line though resonated like, yeah, he's one of those guys. Hey, here's the ask. Done. We'll be getting food on the way. That's it. No, explain it to me or whatever. Granted, if it was a bad idea, you could try to talk me out of it because he was a good man. But yeah, it just had me thinking, like, man, you get that circle of people in your life, and for some, smaller than others. For me, it's very small. I'm a difficult, you know, I'm having a kind-hearted moment today, but I'm not an easy person to get along with. I've come to realize that. You do, you only get so many people who are just like, yeah, whose car are we taking? That is the attitude with them, and Jack was one for me for sure. Jack and Russ both. I've always said it's grown up, it was the four. Grampy raised me as much as anybody when I was real little, we lived with them forever. And he was old school, man, World War II vet. Dad was an alcoholic, never around, took off on the family. He didn't have shoes till he was 10 or whatever. All these crazy stories are his upbringing, so instilled some real values in me because of the way he was brought up and he lived. You know, my dad has been, Papa Gio, I mean, when I say dad, has been with me, but dad knows. Like, Grampy was super responsible for raising me, and Russ was with dad my whole life anyway, so those two were almost interchangeable. And Jack was there too, like Jack was one of them. He had a little bit of a later start, but I had more day-to-day interaction with him than anybody. And I do, I feel like you get to that point in your life, you're like, man, you're only given so many people on the team. And when someone goes out on IR, it's a horrible analogy, but let me use it anyway. Like that's it, you don't get a replacement. And it was like that realization the other day of like, man, because it happened, it just happened yesterday, actually yesterday. What's the other thing? Another thing that just escapes you is just days and times. Today is Thursday, so yeah, Wednesday, April 22nd, he died like three in the morning, we got the call from mom because we had come home, put Theo down to sleep at home. Yeah, just a weird feeling of like, and especially when it's so much of your life, especially the last few months, like every day, hey, what can we do to help? What can we do to get you out and do this or go there, or whatever it is? So yeah, I think that's it. Yeah, a lot more to say. I'm not sure, that's about all I got at me. And like I said, it's been 24 hours, 30 hours, whatever it's been. It's a weird, I mean, yeah, but right before we started the podcast today, I was like, God, I got to pull over. Just, and I was with mom this morning anyways, and she's handing out like a champ and trooper and all that, and she'll have her breakdowns, and she's had her breakdowns and we'll continue. Yeah, today that was mine. Just pull over and just sob like a freaking child to the point of like if a cop comes to the window, I'm getting dragged out because I'm going to think I'm drunk or something. Just sitting there like a baby, soaked face and sniffling. So yeah, we'll see. Obviously, the pods are going to keep going on. I will say too that it started with Russ. I knew this was coming with Jack. Russ was much more sudden. We knew it was coming, but much more sudden. That kind of left that feeling with me a little bit with Jack, just much more so, much more of a void. I just, the only reason I bring it up is to say that we'll see with content. I don't know. I'm still going to do some sales and stuff on eBay, and I'll screw around there now and again. Like work has to continue. Like we have more financial responsibilities than before, so that will continue. It does make you just kind of question and trivialize. How trivial is some of the crap you spend your time on though? I know everybody feels like that when somebody dies, so I'm not saying that's going to be a lasting effect, but for sure right now, there's like a lot of super heavy feelings of like, man, how much of the stuff are you just wasting your time on? Or the bickering I do with people, people I work with and friends or whatever. It's like, man, do you really need that part in your life? I don't know. Maybe, maybe not. So we'll see. We've got some financial, we've got some obligations on the pod anyways coming up. I'm guessing Jesse will kind of just run with this for the next few. I don't know. I'm going to take some time. We're going to travel with mom a little bit too. We'll get the funeral back in Massachusetts in a couple of weeks. We get a big, actually we're super looking forward to going to Knoxville in a few weeks too. We get that big fanatics, which we're going to have Lance from Fanatics on to talk about it. There's a big fanatics event in, not Atlanta. In Knoxville, we're going to go do the Dicks Sporting Goods fanatics thing. So I was going to bring Hannah anyways, and now we're just going to bring mom too. She was going to watch the kid. We're just going to bring mom and the kid will make a weekend out of that and then go back home with her, spend some time up there with the family. So I will be around. I don't know how often you'll hear the voice on this podcast. We have another new show we're supposed to be launching to, a new YouTube series or whatever. We'll probably put that on hold for a little bit. But yeah, I just feel like it's more so for me than for anybody listening, obviously, at this point with the ramblings. But that was kind of the point. I want to come on here and have this be my little. Respectful send off, I guess, the best way to say it. And just to keep the audience up there. You guys have been loyal with us and sticking around for years and years, so we appreciate everybody listening. We try to keep you updated on, I think that's kind of what sets us apart from the other idiots in the space at times. It's like, oh, this is a good buy, this is a good sell, and there's no real life. There's no actual. And here, our motto from the beginning has been, hey, we'll let you in, we'll talk about our families and our kids, and I can't stand my two-year-old this week because of that. And I'm super happy because this just happened with my brother or my sister or whatever. Hey, this is a horrible week because this happened, this tragedy in the family. We've kind of always set that. I just feel like that's how you connect with people. So as therapeutic as it is for me, I feel like that has also been the point of that. I just say, hey, you guys deserve to be kept in the loop. Like that's kind of, hopefully, that is part of what you found endearing about us. So yeah, we want to at least give you the update. So we'll see. That's the show for today. That's it. We're not going to certainly not going to start talking about cards or anything else after that or sports or although if the Celtics lose tonight, I'm going to lose my freaking mind because I hate Philadelphia. Jack, if everybody hates Philadelphia, that's another thing. We hate the Yankees, we hate the Canadians, and we hate everything Philadelphia. Like and so perfect to Saturday, Sunday night in the room, they had the hockey game blasting for Jack because he was a die hard Bruins fan, and it was just perfect, perfect Bruins ending up to nothing in the third, and you blow the lead and just get beat. So I was like, that's perfect. He can go out happy now, like just a consistent losing repertoire for the Boston Bruins like always. So, yeah, so I may be around next week, next week. I may not be Jesse will be here either way. I think probably take a little bit of time, but there you go nightly snow why. So, thanks for listening, and we'll catch you when we catch you. Goodbye.