JANUARY: THE SADDEST MONTH OF THE YEAR
By Jerome Cleary
In life are we given circumstance, and we make choices —or does fate somehow lead us there anyway.
On Jan. 3, 1962, my genetic blood father who created me died of cancer at the age of 28, almost three months before I was born. My mother, then five or six months pregnant, could not remember from all the stress of his illness and death when I was really due.
So her doctor recommended that my mom be induced into labor to have me. My mother chose March 14, two days before my brother’s birthday. At 5:56 p.m., on a Wednesday, I made my debut in a small town just outside of Philadelphia.
My mother was now a widow with three small children. My sister was four at the time, my brother was two, and I was few days old. It was not until almost two years later that I was to meet my stepfather, who became my real father and who raised me.
When I was almost three years old, my mother, a widow, wed my stepfather, a widower. My new dad taught me how to ride my bike and cast away my training wheels. Even today this image is as clear as if it happened yesterday. I am either blessed or cursed with an incredible memory since it’s as if as soon as my eyes and ears were working, everything began being recorded in to my memory.
January is now a very sad month for me since this past Jan. 3 marked the 44th year anniversary of my genetic father’s death and Jan. 22 marks the 18th anniversary of my stepfather’s death. I was 25 when my stepfather passed away.
As years have passed, I have thought about many things. But one thing stands out in my mind, which makes me think some things are predestined like a blue print. During the 1990s, when I was taking care of my mother with her diabetes, I found a Vietnamese acupressurist that someone recommended in Silver Lake. One day as he gave my mother her treatment — and I got a treatment as well — he asked me if I wanted him to do my astrology chart, and I said sure.
Several weeks later when we went back to him for another treatment, he gave me a packet of papers he had handwritten that had a reference to Chinese Astrology and Astrology. There on the front page at the bottom was a reference to me being a Tiger sign in Chinese Astrology but under this was the wording: “Fatherless, Solitary.”
As I stared at the word “Fatherless,” I kept thinking it was true, I was born into this world without a father, then got another one and lost the second one in my mid-twenties. And the other word: Solitary. How does this work? Even today as I write this column, I have somehow ended up still single.
How did it come to pass that this Vietnamese man’s gesture to do an astrology chart would bear those two words?
How did he know? Or how did it happen this way? Was it just predestined that I would end up fatherless twice?
Years ago, in the mid-1990s, a friend put me on a list with her other friends to have a private reading with the medium James Van Praagh who talks to your dead relatives. This was before James Van Praagh hit it big as a television medium, an author and now an executive producer of his TV show, “The Ghost Whisperer” with Jennifer Love Hewitt.
So as the six of us sat there, Mr. Van Praagh finally got to me and he said: “I’ve got both your fathers here. Your genetic blood father is on my right, and your father who raised you is on my left.”
And the reading continued, and and I was thinking: This is how it was supposed to be … I guess.
Jerome Cleary is an actor, writer and comic at The World Famous Comedy Store-www.freecomedytickets.com and can be reached at: jeromeclearytalk@aol.com
In life are we given circumstance, and we make choices —or does fate somehow lead us there anyway.
On Jan. 3, 1962, my genetic blood father who created me died of cancer at the age of 28, almost three months before I was born. My mother, then five or six months pregnant, could not remember from all the stress of his illness and death when I was really due.
So her doctor recommended that my mom be induced into labor to have me. My mother chose March 14, two days before my brother’s birthday. At 5:56 p.m., on a Wednesday, I made my debut in a small town just outside of Philadelphia.
My mother was now a widow with three small children. My sister was four at the time, my brother was two, and I was few days old. It was not until almost two years later that I was to meet my stepfather, who became my real father and who raised me.
When I was almost three years old, my mother, a widow, wed my stepfather, a widower. My new dad taught me how to ride my bike and cast away my training wheels. Even today this image is as clear as if it happened yesterday. I am either blessed or cursed with an incredible memory since it’s as if as soon as my eyes and ears were working, everything began being recorded in to my memory.
January is now a very sad month for me since this past Jan. 3 marked the 44th year anniversary of my genetic father’s death and Jan. 22 marks the 18th anniversary of my stepfather’s death. I was 25 when my stepfather passed away.
As years have passed, I have thought about many things. But one thing stands out in my mind, which makes me think some things are predestined like a blue print. During the 1990s, when I was taking care of my mother with her diabetes, I found a Vietnamese acupressurist that someone recommended in Silver Lake. One day as he gave my mother her treatment — and I got a treatment as well — he asked me if I wanted him to do my astrology chart, and I said sure.
Several weeks later when we went back to him for another treatment, he gave me a packet of papers he had handwritten that had a reference to Chinese Astrology and Astrology. There on the front page at the bottom was a reference to me being a Tiger sign in Chinese Astrology but under this was the wording: “Fatherless, Solitary.”
As I stared at the word “Fatherless,” I kept thinking it was true, I was born into this world without a father, then got another one and lost the second one in my mid-twenties. And the other word: Solitary. How does this work? Even today as I write this column, I have somehow ended up still single.
How did it come to pass that this Vietnamese man’s gesture to do an astrology chart would bear those two words?
How did he know? Or how did it happen this way? Was it just predestined that I would end up fatherless twice?
Years ago, in the mid-1990s, a friend put me on a list with her other friends to have a private reading with the medium James Van Praagh who talks to your dead relatives. This was before James Van Praagh hit it big as a television medium, an author and now an executive producer of his TV show, “The Ghost Whisperer” with Jennifer Love Hewitt.
So as the six of us sat there, Mr. Van Praagh finally got to me and he said: “I’ve got both your fathers here. Your genetic blood father is on my right, and your father who raised you is on my left.”
And the reading continued, and and I was thinking: This is how it was supposed to be … I guess.
Jerome Cleary is an actor, writer and comic at The World Famous Comedy Store-www.freecomedytickets.com and can be reached at: jeromeclearytalk@aol.com
posted by JeromeCleary @ 6:59 PM
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