Sunday, May 19, 2013 -11:54 AM EST



Right after my little breakfast meeting with Caitlyn Nguyen in the hospital cafeteria, I decided it was time to go home to the Compound for a little while and grab a quick shower. Check on things. Change clothes. That sort of thing.


As I climbed back into the Suburban and began to leave, it hit me. I have a Buried Alive match coming up on Saturday. It might be all fun and games to the viewers watching at home. But, the performers have lives away from the ring. We have families. We have problems and issues just like they do.


Mr. Satellite has people back at home. As do I. You've met my father, in a manner of speaking, but there are others, too. Crimson Cobra has a family. Witasick has people he loves. Heyman, , they too. All of us have someone out of view of the XWF cameras.


I drive passed the entrance to the Interstate I'd take to go back to Boston. Just up the street I stop at a florist and climb out of the truck. I walk into the small building and walk up to the counter where a small twenty something year old woman greets me.



FLORIST: "Oh my God! You're Sebastian Duke!"



I love wrestling. I love performing. I hate being recognizable.



SEBASTIAN DUKE: "That, I am."

FLORIST: "My son LOVES you!"



Why?



SEBASTIAN DUKE: "Yeah, that's great."

FLORIST: "Do you think I could get a picture with you and an autograph for my son?"

SEBASTIAN DUKE: "How bout we..."



Thinking of who I was on my way to see, I changed my tune pretty quickly.



SEBASTIAN DUKE: "Yeah, sure. Why not!?"



I stand next to the woman and give my most evil smile I could muster while her associate snaps the photo with her phone. The florist tell her associate to hurry up and print it out.


Technology today. When I was a kid it was 8 bit Nintendo games. 6 grand for a brand new mid-size truck. Gas was 89 cents per gallon.


Oh, the times, they are a-changin'.



FLORIST: "So, Mr. Duke, what can I get for you?"

SEBASTIAN DUKE: "I'm not sure. Surprise me. Just so they're pretty."

FLORIST: "Ohhhhh. Special lady?"

SEBASTIAN DUKE: "The most special."

FLORIST: "Lucky girl!"

SEBASTIAN DUKE: "Nah, I'm the one that was lucky."



The florists associate come out of what I assume was the office holding the photo. The florist takes the photo and places it in front of me along with a black sharpie marker.


The florists then starts gathering flowers.



SEBASTIAN DUKE: "Um. Who do I make this out to?"

FLORIST: "Oh! My sons name is Sean."

SEBASTIAN DUKE: "Sean huh? Interesting."

FLORIST: "Why's that?"

SEBASTIAN DUKE: "Oh, no reason. It's a good name."



Why I thought it was interesting was on a need to know basis. She didn't need to know.


I finish the autograph and lay a 100 dollar bill on the counter. I take my bouquet of flowers from the girl and go on my way.


I roll up the street in the Suburban passing small shops, gas stations, a couple of factories. The usual in Small Town, U.S.A. Soon, I begin to pass by small farms grouped together. Up on the right on a hillside stands an old church.


Just passed the church lays its driveway. I make a right and begin to climb the hill. I'm not headed to the church, though. I'm headed to what lies directly on the hill behind it.


Clinton Cemetery.


Once I'm on the small roadway behind the church that leads to the cemetery, I continue to climb the hill in the Suburban. Just as the hill crests, is an intersection. I make a right at that intersection and continue on.


The small road winds around a bend to the left. I follow that all the way through another small intersection onto a dead end path and bring the Suburban to a stop. I kill the engine and grab the flowers I just bought and exit the truck.


I turn to face the graves and hesitate. I'd been up here a total of 5 times in 30 years. Once, as a child with my grandfather, Asmos Dad, to plant flowers on the graves of his parents. This passed Mothers Day I had to go twice. The first, to show my older brother where it was. The other, to be there for my little brother and little sister as they began to mourn all over again. Once about a week before that.


The other time, was the day we laid her to rest.


The great matriarch of the Duke clan. My fathers mother. My grandmother. The all-knowing, all-seeing, all-hearing, most importantly, all-loving glue that held us all together.


She's been gone for just under three months. The ground is barely settled over her and the footer for her headstone has yet to be laid. Just a plain old temporary tin marker supplied by the funeral home until her permanent one is in place, is the only way you could tell who laid beneath this ground.


Hallowed ground now. For the best, warmest, most loving person I had ever had the pleasure, even more, the privilege, of knowing, now resides here.


When i was young, I always had a fascination with death and cemeteries. Why? I don't know. As I'd grown older. Lost friends. Uncles. Cousins. Now, her. They just freak me out.


I stand here at her graveside. Just staring down at the grass. Listening to the birds chirp. Hearing the leaves rustle as the breeze blows in. I feel at peace. I feel at peace, because I know she is at peace.


In 1996 at the age of 55 she had a major heart attack. They saved her and gave her a triple bypass. In the process of saving her, they nearly killed her. Being a diabetic she was prone to other serious diseases and infections.


While under the knife for her heart bypass, she contracted a serious staff infection that caused her to lose her sternum. They placed a titanium plate in place of it which over the years, the deterioration of the ribs around the plate made any further surgery impossible. 17 years of fighting and struggling every damn day to breathe, to live, finally took its toll on her. It went from a fight for survival to a fight to not die.


She entered the hospital with painful chest pains and due to the fact she could hardly breathe whatsoever. I visited of course, but she was in there a lot over the years. She always went home. You always think "Yeah, sure. Someday. Not today though." On February 24, it was today. I had gone home and planned to go back to see her in the evening when I got the call.


She had the big one.


The fight was over.


There'd be no more hospital visits. No more trips for dialysis. No more heart attacks. No more struggling for each and every breath. Of course, that was the good part of it.


I remember that day in her room she said to me "I'm so sorry honey! I'll never get to meet your little ones."


She'd say those things from time to time when she felt defeated but she always, always bounced back. I didn't really think anything of it that day. But, as I drove home I had a sneaking suspicion that I should turn around. Of course, I buried those thoughts.


How stunned and how wrong was I? I returned to the hospital in record time. I sat there beside her in that hospital bed. She looked as if she was sleeping. The entire family - and its a large family - filled the hallways. I guess, that's the way it is when it's a matriarch. Surrounded by their loved ones as they leave our world.


Her husband. Her two sons. Her daughter. Her daughters in law. Her son in law. Her 8 grandchildren. Her 14 great grandchildren. Huddled together. Grieving. Mourning together.


It was the hardest day of my entire life. Of course it's tied with the day of her funeral. And the day we buried her beneath the ground I stand on.


Tears fall down my face as I stare blankly at the ground. I decide it was time now, to lay down the bouquet of flowers and get the hell out of here. So I climb into the truck and fired it up. I backed it out of the dead end street and headed back toward Boston.


The florist though I was talking about a girlfriend when she asked if the flowers were for a special lady. It wasn't her business. They were indeed for the most special person ever to exist in my life. That's just not something she needed to know.


They say "You don't know what you got until it's gone."


It's never been more true in my life then it is right now.


Buried Alive is coming up.


Like I said, graves and graveyards creep me out. I'll be damned if that one-armed Shove It reject buries me alive.


Dr. Nguyen asked me if I thought I was a good man.


No.


I'm not a good man at all.


I tried to rationalize it by thinking that professional wrestling is a dog eat dog world. It's either eat, or be eaten.


The fact is, I'm not a good man. I realize that now. I just left my grandmothers grave and if she knew the things I have done to others in the name of the Brotherhood as well as in the ring, she'd whoop my ass.


Maybe....


Maybe, it's time for a change.