Steve Osborne (37:23)
How you doing? In February of 1996, I was a sergeant in New York City Police Department. Now, at the time, I was studying for the upcoming lieutenant's test. Now, you probably don't know, but promotion exams in a police department are very, very difficult to even have a chance at passing. You got to study every day for at least six months. You got to get the books, the tapes. You got to go to the classes, the cram sessions, the study groups just to have a chance at passing. Now, I did all of this for the sergeant's test. Worked out good. I got promoted. But this time it wasn't going so good. My head wasn't into it. My heart wasn't into it. And the reason was because of my father. He had cancer and he was dying. Now, every day he would call me up and he would say, hey, how's the studying going? And every day I would lie to him. I would say, it's going good. Don't worry about it. I'm okay. You know. How you doing? You all right? And the reason I would lie to him was I had waited seven years for the sergeant's test, and I waited another seven years for this test. And if I didn't hit this one, I'd have to wait seven years more and it would be too late. So it was now or never. And he knew it. And he was feeling guilty because he knew this was a very important Time in my career, he was feeling guilty that he was being a distraction to me. Now, a lot of guys in this world, they fantasize that they're tough guys. They're not. My father was a genuine right down to the core tough guy. And when he would call me up, he would say, hey, you listen to me and you listen good. That's the way he talked. Don't you let this little thing that I'm going through here fuck you up. Cancer. You got a big day coming up, and you better keep your head screwed on straight. Now, on this particular day, I was sitting at my desk up in the Bronx. I'm trying to get a little bit of studying in, and I was waiting for a phone call. My mother and my sisters were taking him to the hospital for the last time. It was over. It was done with. There was nothing anybody could do for him anymore, and he was going into hospice. So I'm sitting there trying to study, and as usual, nothing's sinking in. The phone rings. It's my sister. She goes, we're here. We're settled in. If you want to talk to him, you better hurry up. So I close up the books, I shove him in the desk, I jump in the car, and off I go. Now, the hospital was in Jersey, so I had a little bit of a ride ahead of me, and I was just thinking about him and me and life. Now, in life, my father was a royal pain in the ass. You know, everything, it was his way or the highway. He was a tough guy to deal with. But him and I always had a special relationship. I was his only son. He was a cop. I was a cop. He was a sergeant. I was a sergeant. He was a lieutenant, and he wanted me to be a lieutenant. He wanted me to have the same opportunities that he did, and. And that's why he was feeling guilty. Now, I always thought he was a cool guy, and I loved hanging out with him. Even when I was a little kid, you know, I would ride my bike. I'd be like 6 years old, and I'd ride my bike over to the station house where he worked. And it was kind of far, and I'd show up there with some dopey excuse I just happened to be passing by. And instead of him getting mad at me for riding my bike so far, he'd be like, come on in, Come on in. And he'd be, like, beaming with pride. He introduced me to all the guys. Hey, how you doing? How you doing? And I don't know what people would think like you come into the station house, you know, and your car got stolen, you know, you got robbed, your house got burglarized, and you go up to the desk to tell the sergeant your sad story, and you look behind them and there's some six year old kids sitting back there with him, you know, And I got my baseball glove on, I'm chewing bubble gum and I'm sitting back there thinking, like, this is cool. This is the life for me. This is what I want to be when I grow up. Now, even when I got old, I loved hanging out with them. When I was old enough to drink, we ended up hanging out in the same neighborhood joint. Every neighborhood's got a bar and ours was Pete's. Now, in Pete's, my father was a little bit of a legend. Our neighborhood wasn't a bad neighborhood, but it was a tough neighborhood. And it didn't take much for the fist to fly. One Sunday morning I go in, forget to have a couple beers, watch the football games, and I notice that the glass on the cigarette machine was broken. So I go down the end of the bar, down to our regular family spot, and I say to Butchie the bartender, I said, hey, Butch, what happened to the cigarette machine? So he just shakes his head. He goes, ah, your father again. Turns out the night before, the old man's sitting in there hanging out. Some young guy comes into the bar, nobody knows him, he's like twice the old man's size and half his age. And he sits down next to him and pulls out a cigarette and he asks, what father? He goes, you got a light? So father goes, nah, you know, I don't smoke. So the guy goes to him, what are you, a fag? Well, that's all it takes. The old man got up, nailed him, laid him out, picks him up, drags him down the end of the bar, makes a right hand turn, drags him down the other end of the bar, puts his head through the cigarette machine and then throws him through the front door out into the street. He always cracks me up, he does. I go home later and I see him, he's sitting in his easy chair, he's watching tv. And you know, he's looking a little old and he's got this sad look on his face. So I said to him, you had a heck of a night in Beats last night. He doesn't even look at me. He's just staring straight at the head, at the tv. And he says to me, he goes, these young punks, he goes, they don't take me seriously anymore. They think I'm soft. They think I'm a cupcake. So I try to reassure him, like, relax, nobody thinks you're a cupcake. And not for nothing, you know, you already had three heart attacks. The next one may be the big one. And if you have it in beats, Mommy's going to be pissed. Being married to him really probably wasn't that easy either. But he looks at me and he goes, hey. He goes, you see this? He goes, I still got one good fight left in me. Don't you worry about it. So I'm at the hospital, I hurry up, up to his room and I walk in and there he is. The toughest guy I ever met was sitting in a chair in a corner in his hospital gown, all slumped over with an IV in his arm and a little oxygen tube hooked to his nose. And they were pumping him up with some heavy duty morphine and he was out of it. He didn't even notice I came in the room. So I went right over to him and I didn't even take my jacket off. I knelt down next to him and I grabbed him by the arm, I shook his arm and I says, hey, hey, it's me. And he lifts his head up and I see his eyes are starting to focus. And he gives me that crooked tooth little smile of his. And it was like I was that 6 year old kid showing up at the station house again, you know, he was really glad to see me now in life. Him and I were never the touchy feely type, you know, there was no hugging and kissing. I love you, I love you. We didn't need any of that crap, you know, he loved me, I loved him, and that was all there was to it, you know, there was no need to get mushy about it. And I didn't think it was going to start now. But he reaches out and he grabs me and he grabs me by the jacket and he pulls me closer to him. I couldn't believe how strong he was. Two seconds ago he was half dead. Now he's got me by the jacket. I don't know what he wants. I don't know if he wants to fight or what. And he pulls me closer to him. He goes, you listen to me and you listen good. He goes, don't you let this little thing that I'm going through here fuck you up. He goes, you got a big day coming up on Saturday and you better keep your head screwed on straight. I wanted to say to him, like, hey, not for nothing, but you Got a pretty big day coming up here yourself, you know, and. And with all the crazy shit that he did in his life, you know, he should be a little bit more concerned about himself rather than me and my stupid test that was coming up in a couple of days. But the fact was, he wasn't concerned about himself in his last moments of life. All he cared about was me and my test. So he pulls me closer to him and he says to me, he goes, you gotta promise me something. He goes, and I'll promise you something. He goes, you gotta promise me that you're gonna forget about me and you're gonna go in there on Saturday and you're gonna hit this thing. He goes, and I promise you something. He goes, I promise you I won't die until Sunday. He goes, but after Sunday, he goes, all bets are off. He goes, I can't take much more of this shit. So I tell him, okay, relax. I promise you I'll be okay. And he's still holding on to me and he goes, and I promise you. And with that, he let go of my jacket and he goes like this, he goes, good boy. And then his arm just dropped down to his side and his head went down and he closed his eyes and he went to sleep and he never woke up again. And that was the last conversation that him and I ever had. The nurse, my mother and my sisters came over and we picked him up and put him in a bed. And my mother, you know, she tucked him in nice and she fluffed his pillow. And I said to the nurse, I said, what now? So she goes, now you wait. Waitin seemed like an easy thing, you know, compared to all the stuff we had been through. You know, hospitals and doctors and chemo waiting seemed like it was gonna be easy. But it wasn't. In a very short time, his lungs started to fill up with fluid. And it was very difficult for him to breathe. He was struggling, he was fighting to suck in every single breath. And it was very difficult to watch. And minutes turned into hours, and hours turned into a day and a day. We were more than a day and a half into this, watching him lay in bed and suffer and fight to live and fight to breathe every breath. In the meantime, my aunt and uncle and my cousins came, you know, lend a little moral support. And we were down in the waiting room down the hall. Now, the people in the hospital must have thought we were kooks or very disrespectful because the laughter that was coming out of that waiting room, you could hear it all the way down the hall. But it wasn't disrespect. Everybody was telling their favorite Tommy Osbourne stories. And everybody had one in life. He was a nut. He was. He was a character. So I go back to the. I go back to the room, and now it's just me and my mother. And it's nighttime and we're looking out the window and it was snowing. And we're watching the snowflakes come down and falling through the street lights and piling up on the cars. And it was very quiet and very peaceful. The room was dark except for one little fluorescent bulb above his bed. And it was really quiet except for the sound of him trying to breathe. And I said to my mother, I said, ma, do you think he's. Is that what he's doing? He's hanging on till Sunday? And she looks at me, she goes, you know your father. I wouldn't put nothing past him. Earlier, the nurse had told me, I asked, I said, how long can he continue like this? And she said, days. She goes, I've seen it go on for a week. I couldn't bear to watch him suffer like this any longer. I mean, days. He had suffered enough in life, and I didn't want him to suffer anymore because of me. So I had this bright idea, but it seemed wrong, wrong, wrong to lie to a guy on his deathbed. But I said to my mother, I said, what do you think that if I tell him that it's Sunday and I hit the test and it's okay? And she looks at me and she goes, I was surprised. She goes, do it. And with that, she just hugged me, kissed me, and she goes, good luck. I'll leave you two alone. And she left. Now it's just me and him. And I was half expecting him to sit up and say, don't bullshit me. Where's your books? Why aren't you studying? But he didn't do that. He was in La La Land. He was. He was somewhere between here and a very far off place that he was eventually going to have to go. So I grabbed the chair and I pulled it up next to his bed. I grabbed his hand and I said, hey, it's me. I says, listen, it's Sunday. I took the test and I think I hit this thing, you know, the answers seemed like they were popping off the page at me. There was a couple I wasn't too sure about, but most of them seemed like they were popping off the page. And I walked out of there feeling pretty good. I Think I hit it. And then I said to him, now, you listen, and you listen to me. You don't have to hang on for me anymore. I'm all right. I appreciate what you did for me, and I appreciate everything that you did for me in life. I'm doing okay. And I know I wouldn't be the man I am without you and everything that you taught me. You know, the guys in the neighborhood all think I ended up a lot like you. I said, I know that doesn't make Mommy happy to hear, but it made me happy. So I told him, now, I want you to go wherever it is you gotta go, and you do whatever it is you gotta do. I'm okay now. And I told him, and I'll see you soon. So I figured, what the hell, I could get mushy once, right? So I leaned over, I gave him a hug, I kissed him on the forehead and told him I loved him. And that's it. I walked out. My mother was outside. She goes, how did it go? So I'm like, you know him. He never listened to anybody in life. You know, who knows if he listened this time? So she went back in her room, took her place, and I went back in the hall, pacing the halls. And sure enough, two hours later, in the middle of a big snowstorm at the age of 59, he finally stopped fighting and he died. Now, we all went in the room and we said our goodbyes and we jumped in the cars and we drove through the snow to my mother's house. And we were all drained. We were exhausted. It was tough. I went into his bedroom, and he had a nightstand next to his bed. And I opened up the drawer and I took out his wallet. And in his wallet was his lieutenant shield and his ID card. And I took that and I put it in my back pocket over here. Because in this pocket, I had my sergeant's shield and my ID card. Now, I had a test to go take. Don't ask me how. It was some kind of miracle. I was totally unprepared. But I passed this thing, and I got promoted to lieutenant. And in the end, I realized that in life he was a difficult guy, and he had a difficult time expressing affection and love. But he showed me how much he loved me. The only way he really knew how. He saved that last fight to help me out. Thank you.
