By Don Hall

Danny Aiello died at age eighty-six on December 12. I didn’t know him. Likely, you didn’t either. His death leaves a hole, however, whether he was a personal friend, a family member, or co-worker or not. He was a part of our lives in a strange adjacent way.

He was Rocco in Radio Days. Sal in Do the Right Thing. Johnny Cammareri in Moonstruck. Joe Bella in Once Around. He was Tony, Frank Anselmo, and Jack Ruby. His face, his voice are stuck in our collective memories. Through film, he lives on as a younger, more vital Danny Aiello than he was on December 11.

People who knew him—who knew his joys, his lies, his regrettable outbursts, his moments of laziness or complacency, his hard work ethic, him—grieve. The rest of us feel the absence but not really. Not viscerally. And we can all go back and watch Moonstruck and relive him any time we want.

Last month, a close friend of Dana’s died after a long bout with lung cancer. They were close when she was in Chicago (before she met me) and were bonded in that way an older woman bonds with a younger woman as confidant, mentor, and friend. I met Tani once in Chicago, a brief tsunami of personality and stories and a big, throaty laugh.

As friends do, she and Dana lost touch but when we came to Vegas, lo and behold, Tani and her husband Tom had moved here before us. She and Dana jumped right back into the groove and I, of course, enlisted her to perform BUGHOUSE! A few times. She showed up, ready to debate, despite being exhausted from clinging to vitality sapped by chemotherapy.

You didn’t know her but there’s a hole left where she was before. If you listen closely, there are many holes to hear left by those who have succumbed to finality every second of every day. For us, her absence is quite loud.

We tend to take it for granted that living a long life is an inherently good thing. A desirable outcome to living is to live as many years as we can get. As in all things on a planet as monkeys with advanced brain functions, the conundrum lies in the axiom that the longer we live, the more of our fellow apes cease to exist in the material realm. Our friends and family slowly drift away like fireflies in embers.

The smarter we get (because isn’t the fucking point in the first place? To get smarter and wiser as we grow old? The shame of our unending quest to stay youthful is the rejection of that wisdom earned through experience which is, in part why earlier generations revered their elderly and we stick them in homes and bitch about how slow they drive...) the more we are required to face the fact that death is always right there in front of us. 

My very good friend recently lost his mother. She was only 63 years old. While he confessed that he spent a solid amount of time with her over the holidays, he also admitted to feeling cheated. Sixty-three is not old old. She was in good health for her age. My friend wanted more life from his mother, wanted more time. This is natural to want, I think. On the flip side of his crushing grief is the fact that his lovely wife is ten weeks pregnant.

Serendipity is either a fiction we choose to ignore or a narrative connection we choose to have faith in but whatever the case, there it is. Losing someone dear just as we celebrate a new someone on her way. My condolences were mixed with congratulations as with, honestly, most of either.

We ended up going to Tani’s wake (and Dana attended her funeral as I was working) and, as with most American wakes, Tani was in her pine box on display. I’ve only been to two funerals in my life (long story for another time) but Dana’s grandfather had an open casket and that was all I needed to swear off of that morbid spectacle. Instead, I respectfully supported my wife as she wept and left a feather with the body.

I choose to remember Tani alive, in the Moonstruck of her in my mind: regaling us with stories of her adoptive parents and upbringing, pulling off her wig for the first time in front of people in a tremendous act of personal bravery and laughing as we marveled and gushed, getting up on the stage at the Bunkhouse Saloon to debate topics I’d given her and being, frankly, amazing with no regard to her failing health.

Below are audio clips of her two final stage performances. These represent how I choose to celebrate Tani Freiwald. Take a listen. The very fact that I have these recordings to share validates my love of live podcasting.