Friday, August 28, 2026
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Over forty years ago, I introduced my best friend Colleen to a man named Gerry. It was love at first sight and they have been together ever since. Everything that came after that introduction — the family they built, the life they made — is the greatest thing I’ve ever been a small part of. And the very best of it was Gerard.
I knew him from the day he was born. Not from a few years in, not from a distance. From day one. My oldest daughter knew Gerard longer than she has known her own sister, and before Gerard met his own brother Patrick. That’s how far back this goes, and that’s how much he was woven into my family and not just theirs. He was my son from another mother, and I never said that as a figure of speech.
He fought for his health from the time he was an infant. Thirty-five years of it. I was there for every surgery he had before he was even three years old, and I watched him grow from a bright child into an extraordinary man. And here is the thing about Gerard that I want people to understand: he never let any of it be the headline of his life. He carried something heavy every single day and still walked into rooms like he owned them. I used to tell him that if I could take even ten percent of his confidence and bottle it, I’d be a millionaire. I meant it. I’ve never met anyone, before or since, who had that much of it and still had room left over for everybody else.
Since the heartbreaking news, I keep going back over all of it. Borrowing my father’s camper so both our families could go camping together, and Gerard as a little boy tumbling down those camper stairs and coming up with a black eye so bad that everyone who saw him was convinced somebody had punched him — oh, the dirty looks we got from others while Gerard just continued to smile and laugh like it didn't even faze him. Taking him trick-or-treating when he was small. Taking and watching him take that microphone and perform on stage at Villa Roma. Sitting across a table from him playing cards. Shooting pool with him on his 18th birthday. Apple picking with the whole family. And the last big one, his 34th birthday, when his parents surprised him with a party bus and took us all to Atlantic City for the day. I didn’t know at the time that I was collecting all these beautiful memories. You never do.
I saw him just last week at IHOP. I’ve replayed it over and over since we lost him — sitting there with him, talking, laughing, and then putting my arms around him for what turned out to be our last hug. I will be grateful for that for the rest of my life. I didn’t know it was the last one, and maybe that’s its own small mercy, because I got to hold him the way you hold someone you’re going to see again.
He was the most positive, most honest person I knew. He didn’t do fake, and he didn’t do cruel. He was fiercely protective of the people he loved, and loyal in a way that people talk about more than they actually are. And if anybody needs proof of that loyalty, the man was a Jets fan! A lifelong, unshakable, against-all-available-evidence Jets fan lol. I’m a 49ers fan, and the two of us could go at it for hours about football — the teams, the players, who was overrated, who was washed. He gave me endless grief and I gave it right back, and I would give anything to have one more of those arguments with him. He was funny. God, he was so funny. He brought endless laughter into people’s lives, and especially into mine.
And then there was what the two of us had, which was ours. Gerard was confident in front of the whole world, but there were only a very, very few people he ever let his guard down with, and somehow I was one of them. He trusted me with the parts of himself he didn’t hand out to anybody. It went both ways, too. He was the person I felt safe with because he loved me for me. Not a version of me, not who I was supposed to be. Just me. You don’t get many people like that in a lifetime. I got 35 and a half years with mine. There was no one like him, and there will never be anyone like him again. The world is genuinely dimmer without him in it, and I don’t know how else to say it.
To Colleen and Gerry: thank you for letting me be a part of your family, and for letting Gerard be a part of mine. Thank you for every holiday, every birthday, every ordinary day I got to be in the room. Being trusted with him was one of the great privileges of my life. I love you both, and I’m not going anywhere.
And to Gerard: thank you so very much for 35 years of being exactly who you were. I was lucky to have you. I will forever love you and miss you. Rest easy, my friend.
(718) 761-5544 | 
matthewfh@matthewfuneralhome.com | 
2508 Victory Boulevard, Staten Island, NY 10314
(718) 761-5544
matthewfh@matthewfuneralhome.com