In October 2022, just before joining the production of Tyler Taormina’s “Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point,” which later cast my grandma Mary Reistetter as the grandma within the film, my grandfather Joe passed away. He was a month away from turning 85.
Due to COVID, our family’s last Christmas all together turned out to be in 2019. My grandpa’s high risk of infection as a longtime sufferer of C.O.P.D. who required round-the-clock oxygen assistance precluded him from partaking in the annual holiday-time gathering.
It was quite surreal to see uncanny memories of Christmases past come to life thanks to the movie magic at play in the aforementioned film, not to mention my grandma’s presence on set—her paintings, her piano light and skirt, and her literal living legend self.
Meanwhile, I felt a dash of my grandpa when Chris Lazzaro’s “Cousin Bruce” had his big monologue at the dinner table, set in a dining room that bore eerie architectural resemblances to my grandma’s real-life home.
During filming, and especially when watching the final product, I am instantly taken back to, hands-down, my favorite Christmas memory.
Christmas Eve. 2019. I have one of the worst sinus infections of my life. I sported no congestion. My nose wasn’t running. Yet I felt as if my head would explode at any moment. Akin to a second-to-none hangover following a night of partying in the New Orleans Quarter with unruly vampires who subsequently left me to burn in the scorching sun come the morning time—is how I’d best describe it, despite not having touched a drop of alcohol the night prior.
I didn’t hold any overmounting concerns with regard to my curiously compromised mainframe. I simply just wanted to die. Do you know what I mean?
This never felt more apparent than when I realized my attempts to escape gripping headsickness would prove futile. I recognized halfway through my first watches of both Michael Mann’s “Thief” and Mike Nichols’ “The Birdcage” that afternoon any visual intake of the film medium would make my cranial insides boil to a violent pulp.
The cellphone screen leaving me in equal languish, I had one last recourse: turn to a podcast. I queued up an A24 “Actors on Actors” episode wherein “Superbad” co-stars turned longtime chums Jonah Hill and Michael interviewed each other. I listened to them recap how their lives changed overnight during the shoot, and subsequent rollout of that film. My concussive-esque woes did not completely subside, but were sporadically free from my mind as I absorbed the respective origin stories of two major influences on my own creative aspirations. All starting to seem good and dandy until—
—a light switch “flipped on,” and a misdiagnosed migraine screaming back in with a vengeance. My family was summoning me; we were to be en route to Grandma’s momentarily.
Mind you, Grandma’s, as always, is only about half a mile up the street—it’s where my Dad grew up. I spent a large part of my upbringing running away there without breaking a sweat.
However, in this compromised state, I cannot contemplate any scenario in which I get off this couch to mobilize–which would surely invite further dizziness.
Moreover: I’m barely hanging on while listening to Hill and Cera converse; I can’t fathom interacting with anyone myself at this current juncture, let alone close loved ones I have known my whole life, and usually have no problem whatsoever shooting the breeze with.
Wishing to elect a Fat Amy plea, having a grand ol’ time whilst horizontal-like seeming the much more preferred option, I ultimately relented and let ritualistic commitment win out. It may not have been that much of a conscious decision, but with a whole heap of hindsight, “FOMO” set in—I did not want to take the Reistetter Christmas Eve tradition, and its rostered attendees at the time, for granted.
I didn’t have to dress to the nine’s, anyway. Up until a certain age, it was encouraged to wear pajamas to these occasions. I don’t remember what I wore in 2019, but it was not anything overly beyond bedtime attire.
I do remember who I talked to the entire time, though, as is the point of this reflection. Uncharacteristically so, I plopped my behind down on the chair in my grandparents’ den—a proverbial sidecar perpendicularly adjacent to my grandpa’s couch— and did not move for the next 5 hours.
At the time, my grandpa was not yet totally immobile; he was years handi-capable, but by and large made most sense for him to stay promptly put whenever possible. Up until that point, debilitating illness did not deter him from making it to every one of his grandkids’ games. Now and moving forward, vigilantly watching the Dallas Cowboys fumble their playoff chances or give us—he and I were the family outliers, sorry Giant and Jet fan readers—false hope was the extent of his athletic participation.
I grew up fascinated by the stubborn family patriarch’s insatiable knack for explosively arguing over just about everything, only to dial back the double down when I would be the last one who remained, who had not been driven to bolt from the room. He would turn to me, and break his Clint Eastwood-like scowl, subduing a smirk as he’d ask: “Didn’t they know I was kidding?”
Indulgences upon Nacho Cheese Doritos and Crab Dip, Rice Balls and Shrimp Cocktail dominated the kitchen activity. Concurrently, my grandpa and I unleashed an agreement storm of talking points—a cacophonous clip show of our best conversational highlights from over the years:
The Yankees’ inability to hit for the clutch in the playoffs. How Veterans’ Day was originally christened Armistice Day. The time he and other parents in the neighborhood thought an alien-like creature crash-landed on the wooded street divider, but when they converged upon the figure it turned out to be an authentically-scaled E.T. doll. Tom Brady’s wife being a… ah, better to keep some things private, in this day and age. But Grandpa, if I know anything, it’s that you would have loved the Roast of TB12. Mark my words.
Hazed as the “antisocialties” of the family would not sit right any other year, but it didn’t sting one bit in 2019. The rest of my family recalls Grandpa emerging from the den, and standing without assistance to deliver a brief, but high-impact speech about having hosted Christmas for half a century—and the importance of continuing the family tradition of everyone coming together. They naturally reckoned he rested all early evening to pull this off.
Whereas I know and appreciate the full picture. My night was spent seeing him devote persistent, intermittent attention to the special batch of remarks he had written down on paper between our back-and-forth’s—not-so-privately rehearsing the words forwards and back so he didn’t miss a beat when it was high time to unveil this surprise. We don’t say “grace”—so this hit like decades’ worth of graces combined.
It would stand to reason that Grandpa was feeling extra sentimental that night, his younger brother having died four months earlier. This perhaps instilled in him this notion that there very well could be no next Christmas for him either, so he ought to express how he felt about the family before his number was called.
He surely could not have known it at the time, but Grandpa’s decision to make this speech retroactively proved fortuitous; the world shut down four months later, and we didn’t see him for about 6 months after that. No one did other than Grandma. By the time Christmas 2020 rolled around, quarantine was recommended once more. We wouldn’t dare risk exposing Grandpa to something that ran against his impressively carried out late-in-life mission: cheating death at every turn.
Though he technically passed two years, he continues to cheat death because the stories don’t stop. If I could have one more conversation with him, I would love to hear his thoughts on the movie which I produced, and in which his wife starred. This will never not seem like a bananaland sentence to rattle off, yet it’s an accurate one nonetheless.
If I know him as I know my dad, the two men who molded me most, I bet he too would laugh raucously for the entirety of the movie, only to then turn to me as the end credits rolled to downplay his reaction and say: “...that was cute.”
That was Grandpa.
Thank you for the memories, the example you set, and demonstrating to me the persuasive power of words. Your farewell speech helped carry me through writing your obituary and delivering the prayer service at your funeral, and will surely play a factor in my delivery of Matt’s best man speech next week.
We did not forget your wish: this holiday season brings family states apart back together again, for Christmas and then my brother’s wedding a few days later. It’s a Sunday-set affair, so here’s hoping the Cowboys can salvage one to close out the year—and perhaps even sneak into the playoff picture.
Lord knows you and I would be the only ones in the building or felt within the building rooting for that outcome, but what else can we say? We are the family outliers, after all.