I am the firstborn child of Mary Brigid O’Connor and Stanley Daniel Galliani. I was born in September of 1957.

On New Year’s Day 1982 we parted company in anger with my father yelling at me, “Get out! Get out, and don’t come back!”

I told him then, “Don’t say it if you don’t mean it. You know the history of our family!”

To which he replied, “Get the hell out of my house!” And I did.

That was 37 1/2 years ago and to be brutally honest I’ve never missed them or felt a desire to reconnect. And the feeling was clearly mutual. No attempts to patch things up were ever made.

When I was turning forty I reached out to my mother in writing to ask her if I could borrow the family photo album so that I might make copies as I had no photos from my childhood.

My mother replied in a voicemail in which she laughed and said, “I’m not interested in helping out with any self-aggrandized tribute to YOU.” And that was that, 23 years ago. I wasn’t really surprised and I moved on and continued with my happy and rewarding life.

Continue reading ➞ This Is Going To Make It Hard To Reconcile