Phil Gellis
This is what I get for making an In Memoriam post. Immediately after I posted, I went over to Facebook . . . to discover that one of my oldest friends--whom most of my West Coast friends never knew--died yesterday from complications in the wake of open heart surgery. Phil and I went waaay back and had a long, loving, complicated history with each other. For me his death is layered with love and frustration, friendship and regret.
Phil and I met shortly after I graduated from college via setsyoustraight at her birthday party. He was sharp and funny and thoughtful. He was, first and foremost, an actor, singer, and director, huge in the Long Island regional theater community. (You can see him here performing Tom Lehrer's Masochism Tango and performing something from his beloved Gilbert and Sullivan. His greatest love was playing Sancho in "Man of LaMancha." It was a role he never grew tired of playing--that and Nicely Nicely from "Guys and Dolls".) He paid the bills by being a travel agent. He loved baseball and theater. And he was a loyal, devoted father. We dated. We broke up. We were, above anything else, good, good friends--for years and years. A lot of the Broadway shows I saw, I saw in Phil's company. We talked about books and games. We talked about travel, politics, friends, relationships. A lot of our friendship over the last twenty years was preserved through cross-country phone calls. I worried about his health from the very first time we met; he'd always had weight challenges and health issues. He'd always insist, despite gout and diabetes, that he was fine, healthy as he could possibly be. He was divorced when I met him, and married again twice over the years--his last wife is a lovely woman and I know she made him very happy.
When I read on Facebook on December 19 that he was going in for open heart surgery, I was both unsurprised and worried. He'd never been a healthy man. And it's not like such things haven't gone bad before. As it turned out, they went bad again, and now Phil is gone.
I'm so grateful to have had his friendship. I'm so grateful to have seen the shows he was in and to have attended shows with him. I'm so sorry for the times I wasn't the best friend I might have been. But most of all, I'm so grateful to have had the time together that we had. The last thing I said to him was in a Facebook post, telling him to take care and do what the doctors told him to do. I know he did. I just regret that there wasn't one last phone call.
Phil and I met shortly after I graduated from college via setsyoustraight at her birthday party. He was sharp and funny and thoughtful. He was, first and foremost, an actor, singer, and director, huge in the Long Island regional theater community. (You can see him here performing Tom Lehrer's Masochism Tango and performing something from his beloved Gilbert and Sullivan. His greatest love was playing Sancho in "Man of LaMancha." It was a role he never grew tired of playing--that and Nicely Nicely from "Guys and Dolls".) He paid the bills by being a travel agent. He loved baseball and theater. And he was a loyal, devoted father. We dated. We broke up. We were, above anything else, good, good friends--for years and years. A lot of the Broadway shows I saw, I saw in Phil's company. We talked about books and games. We talked about travel, politics, friends, relationships. A lot of our friendship over the last twenty years was preserved through cross-country phone calls. I worried about his health from the very first time we met; he'd always had weight challenges and health issues. He'd always insist, despite gout and diabetes, that he was fine, healthy as he could possibly be. He was divorced when I met him, and married again twice over the years--his last wife is a lovely woman and I know she made him very happy.
When I read on Facebook on December 19 that he was going in for open heart surgery, I was both unsurprised and worried. He'd never been a healthy man. And it's not like such things haven't gone bad before. As it turned out, they went bad again, and now Phil is gone.
I'm so grateful to have had his friendship. I'm so grateful to have seen the shows he was in and to have attended shows with him. I'm so sorry for the times I wasn't the best friend I might have been. But most of all, I'm so grateful to have had the time together that we had. The last thing I said to him was in a Facebook post, telling him to take care and do what the doctors told him to do. I know he did. I just regret that there wasn't one last phone call.