In Memoriam

In Memoriam

Johnny Vetruchio 

He lived as he died: alone.

Johnny Vetruchio died on August 2nd, six days before his thirty-fifth birthday. It was a quiet passing; sudden cardiac arrest at the stroke of 2:37am. He was discovered midmorning on the living room couch, an episode of The Simpsons still playing in the background. He is honored by a humble group of twenty-five in the basement of St. Richard’s church, Sunday night at 7pm.

Prelude . . . . . . organ rendition of ‘Iris,’ Goo Goo Dolls.

Prayer . . . . . . Pastor Benjamin Richard  

Tributes . . . . . . friends/family

Speech by Mary Vetruchio (mother)

Johnny was always a quiet child. He came out of the womb wide-eyed and reaching for the ceiling. The doctors thought there was something wrong with his lungs. I wasn’t convinced it wasn’t a problem of the heart. He kept growing, but his heart never seemed to make it past the third grade. For a long time we were scared that he would never marry, never get a real job, never make something of himself. Then came Pauline, and we all breathed a sigh of relief.

(a pause for polite laughter)

We always wanted that future for Johnny, and he’d only just embarked on it when he was taken from us. We hoped he’d give us grandchildren, and a legacy to be proud of. Lord knows we told him that every time we saw him, but even though he never got the chance, Johnny was always a good son. An easy son. He never snapped, never snuck out, never stormed off and slammed his door. He was the kind of boy who would only say ‘good’ when you asked about his day, no matter how much you pressed. There was a marinara stain in the shape of a flower on one of our kitchen tiles, and all he would do was stare at it. Too in the clouds and too weighed down at the same time. His father bought him glasses that year, sturdy black frames that always slipped down Johnny’s nose. It brings me peace to know that they are both in a better place now. Fishing in a great big lake, even though Johnny always squirmed more than the bait.

(more polite laughter)

Johnny never liked to cry at funerals. He never liked to cry at all, in fact. He liked his shoes and the floor and yet was never quite grounded in the world. He was born reaching for the ceiling, but chose to live a life as small as possible. He is known by few and loved by fewer, cut short before he could truly leave a legacy. It is a tragedy, but he will be put to rest where his eyes always seemed to find solace. I hope there is some comfort in that.

Mary is escorted off the stage by her friend, hunched over and hiccuping between exaggerated breaths. She accepts the congregations’ words of assurance, nodding and dabbing at her face with a handkerchief to cover up the fact that she has no tears to cry.

Speech by Pauline Vetruchio (wife)

It was my best friend who first said, “Pauline, you are going to marry that man.” At the time, I didn’t believe her. Johnny was sitting in the corner of the bar with a friend and a book, and he looked about as interested in me as the ink stain on the floor. But my friend went over and came back with his number, and the rest is history. Johnny never begrudged me my freedom. I think that’s what I loved most about him. He was happy to sacrifice date nights for girls night out, happy to go to bed early and leave me notes on the counter. Johnny smiled with his teeth, so wide and boxy that I used to make fun of him for being a robot. He never quite broke that shell from the bar; was always a good man but never quite mine. I often wondered what really lay inside him, and now I always will. If I had known our time together would be cut so short, I would’ve pulled him out on the town with me, woken him up with freshly baked cookies. I feel like we never quite got to settle into our marriage, to be that old couple who holds hands on the sidewalk. I think about what it would’ve been like, but it’s so hard to imagine. We were living as separate halves to a whole, never quite joined, and now the gap is stretching wider. The right side of me aches, always reaching for that other half. In time, it will heal. That’s what I’m told. That’s what I believe. And I hope that up in heaven, God is reuniting Johnny with whatever missing pieces lay inside of him.

Pauline returns to her seat, flashing watery smiles. Ten minutes later, she sneaks out the back door of the church. She is late for a hair appointment.

Speech by Samuel Ortovkin (everything and nothing all at once)

I met Johnny in the third grade. He had this awful cut on his lip from face planting in a pile of mulch, and the kids wouldn’t let him hear the end of it. I, on the other hand, had a jelly sandwich—no peanut butter—with the crusts cut off and a dinosaur-shaped ice pack from my mother. I loved my mother and I loved that ice pack, but Johnny looked like he needed it more, so I sat down and passed it over. He looked up at me with these big doe eyes like it was an ancient prehistoric fossil and not some random ice pack. See, that was the thing. No one knew why Johnny had decided to go headfirst into that mulch, except me. He had little bird keychains on his backpack and feathers stuffed in his pockets and he wanted to fly. He really believed he could. For a moment, staring up at him on top of the mound, I thought maybe he could too. If anyone could defy logic and gravity, it was Johnny. Even if all he ended up with was a split lip and a whole host of new bullies. I would hiss back at them, whenever I found his head shoved in a locker or a soggy peanut butter sandwich in his fist. He made his own lunch, even when he was too young to be playing with knives. I knew how pathetic he always felt when they laughed at the uneven slices and smudgy plastic bag, and it made me angry. I would’ve learned to throw punches for him. He always looked at me with those big doe eyes, like he couldn’t understand why I did it. But I always knew, from the first instant I watched his lip split on the pavement. I liked him. I probably even loved him. Johnny was slow to warm up, but once he did, you felt like you could burn from the inside out. We kicked up mulch and raced home and played Uno in the center aisle of the bus, and we were best friends. Our cards had mud and greasy potato chip stains all over them, but they were ours. So many days he would walk onto the bus grayed out, dull, but as soon as I pulled out those cards his face lit up. Maybe it was never about the cards at all. Uno. One. Johnny was my one. I asked why he was so sad all the time and he said he wasn’t sure if his parents liked him. I went with the most obvious answer: how could they not? He was quiet and soft and loved with his whole heart. You took that from him. All of you. You stole his wonder and his hollows and replaced them with sharp edges. He lost his doe eyes and stopped trying to fly and I hated it. Looking at me was the only time he smiled, and I was so in love that I didn’t care. It made me proud and it made me so profoundly sad. Late nights with Iris drifting in from the dorm room next door, almost sleeping but not. Hands stretched out across the dark, almost touching but not. The gap never closed. I never pushed. I would take as much as I could get. As long as he smiled. As long as he was happy. That’s what I told myself, that’s what I said to him the morning of his wedding. I think he always knew, from the first instant his lip split on the pavement, how I felt. He knew it when he wiped jelly off my nose, when our pinkies brushed on top of old sleeping bags, when he looked up at me doe-eyed in his perfect navy suit. I wanted to make him happy. It should have been me. In another life, he said, but he couldn’t finish his sentence. He walked away, and my heart split over a pile of mulch. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to convince myself it was better this way. That he would still smile. That was the worst possible outcome I could imagine, that there would be no one left to witness his warmth. When he died, no one found him until he was cold. I would’ve been there. I would’ve held his hand until the blood pooled and went still. I would have loved him more than all of you combined. Hell, that’s exactly what I did. But now he’s dead, and it’s too late. I missed the last year of his life because he chose someone who wasn’t me. And the worst part is, I know that in his dying breaths he regretted it. It was my name that escaped his lips as his heart seized. That’s all I’ll ever get from him, and I can accept it. But can you?

Sam’s speech is left sitting in the bottom left drawer of his desk. He is not invited to the funeral, and he does not go. He loves Johnny—always has and always will—but Johnny made his choice. He lived as he died: alone.