Learning to cry between hello, goodbye

Men don’t cry between hello and goodbye -- it’s a lesson that Anthony

“Tony the Hat” Monkiewicz learned over five years.

The 65-year-old Costa Mesa resident, who earned his nickname by

wearing one of his many hats every day since he was a young boy, lost

someone very close to him -- his girlfriend Patricia Postal -- to

cancer in 1998.

He was overcome with grief -- but not the type of grief you’d

expect. Monkiewicz felt guilty. Guilty that he’d never told her how

much he loved her, that Postal never knew how important she was to

him. He felt he had not done right by her in life.

While soaking in the tub one night shortly after her death,

Monkiewicz said he heard Postal’s voice. She spoke to him and told

him, “It’s OK to cry.”

Around the same time, he found a hope chest of hers full of

letters, poems and other writings scratched on scraps of paper and

cocktail napkins.

Monkiewicz felt compelled to write. He began a five-year journey

of writing the book he knew Postal wanted him to write, getting her

stories and thoughts -- as well as his own -- on paper.

Having never written professionally before, this was not an easy

feat, but he managed to complete book.

“Men Don’t Cry Between Hello and Goodbye” is a story about a man

and a woman who love each other so deeply that not even death can

keep them apart.

The book, which Monkiewicz is self-publishing through Authorhouse,

is due out within two months.

The Daily Pilot’s Lindsay Sandham recently met Monkiewicz to hear

about his life, his love and what he ultimately gained from his

tragic loss.

So your book started off with this poem, “Between Hello and

Goodbye,” that Patricia wrote, and then it kind of evolved.

It starts from a lullaby that she used to actually sing to me. She

made this lullaby up, and she used to tell me that the only thing

that’s important is the time spent between hello and goodbye. And

then as the book ends, we find out that there is life after death and

we still can go on, and we still will be together someday.... But

basically it’s talking about how we live our lives and that time is

of the essence for us.

You were raised with the attitude that it’s not OK for men to cry.

How did you deal with your emotions while Patricia was battling

cancer?

I was strong; I stood by her. And then she finally says to me at

one point, which was only after her death -- it sounds kooky -- but

she said, “Anthony, it’s OK to cry.” We learn that it is OK to cry;

it’s OK to say “I love you;” it’s OK to embrace somebody -- it’s all

about love and all the experiences of it. She was a love creature and

she loved life and she loved people. But men, we have a tendency, and

it’s really about men sometimes that don’t know how to say “I love

you.”

Do you think you’ll continue to write now that the book is

finished?

I am so involved in this. I got a backup book right now that’s

coming right behind it.... I could do a sequel to this, but I’ll be

quite frank, it’s a tear-jerker. It’s funny, but it’s a tear-jerker.

My thing is, I’m comedy. I like to laugh, and I like people to laugh.

And I’m writing a book right behind it called “Everybody’s Doing It

But Me.”

What’s that about?

I’m almost embarrassed to say. It’s a comedy about -- true stories

again -- about what goes on in my life, all our lives. Everybody

seems to be sailing through and smelling the roses, reaping the

rewards. I’m one of these guys in the book, or like a lot of us, like

Woody Allen -- if it can go wrong, it does.

You wrote the book in the third person. Was that therapeutic --

treating it as a person from the outside looking in?

Oh, I am so thankful that I wrote this because what I did, I

learned who Anthony was, who he really was. And I looked at him as an

outside person, I never dealt with Anthony in the book as me; I dealt

with him.... When you’ve never written before, and you’re trying to

say it right, and you’re trying to do something worthy, it’s really

hard, and I made a lot of mistakes ... but I’m confident now that

I’ve got a beautiful, beautiful love story that says a lot. I just

feel very, very good about it.