My Uncle Sal: The Hero I Knew, The Man I Didn't

Recently, my little cousin Morgan—well, not so little anymore, because she's grown into a beautiful, intelligent, and amazing women—wrote a post about her dad for Father’s Day.

Her words were honest, vulnerable, and incredibly moving.

She wrote about a man who raised her and her siblings as a single father. A man who stepped into parenthood without much of a roadmap because his own relationship with his father had been strained. She wrote about his sacrifices, his growth, his love, and the ways he showed up for his children despite not always having someone show him how.

As I read her words, I found myself smiling.

And crying.

Because her father's father was my Uncle Sal.

To me, Uncle Sal was larger than life.

He was the pillar of our big Sicilian family. He was the glue that held everyone together. He was loud, loving, protective, and steady in a world that often felt anything but. When I look back on my memories with him, he was my savior, my person who could make everything better with just sounding like Donald Duck. A good portion of my childhood included him, his family, and the time I spent there.

When my own life fell apart at thirteen while my parents were going through a divorce, Uncle Sal was supposed to be my safe place. He was the person I wanted to run to for advice, comfort, or simply someone to tell me that everything would eventually be okay. He was who I had hoped would save me through this hard time.

I loved him fiercely.

I admired him.

I adored him.

In fact, I had already decided that if my own father couldn't walk me down the aisle one day, Uncle Sal would.

But life doesn't always allow us to keep our heroes.

I was only thirteen when he passed away. It was right after some horrible things happened with my brother and my parents separating. My world was falling apart all around me, and I lost the one person who could always make things better.

As children, we often see the adults in our lives through one lens. We see how they love us. How they protect us. How they make us feel.

But as we grow older, something interesting happens.

We begin to see not only our own truths, but the truths of those connected to us.

Reading Morgan's words about her father, my cousin, made me realize something that took me years to understand:

My Uncle Sal, my hero, may not have been the hero to everyone.

And both truths can exist at the same time.

That realization isn't easy.

Because we want people to be all good or all bad. Hero or villain. Saint or sinner.

Real life isn't that simple.

The man I knew and loved could have also been a man who struggled in ways I never saw. The father I admired from the outside may not have been the father his own children needed on the inside.

Neither truth cancels out the other.

Both can be true.

I think about this often as a mother.

The mother I was to my oldest daughter is not the same mother I am to my youngest son.

My oldest daughter and I grew up together. I was stricter then, but she also had the young fun mom. We would stay up late, we would drop everything and go to the beach, it was her and I. She taught me how to be a mother. She taught me the depth of love and heartbreak. I never knew I could love someone so much until her. She was my first true love!

My oldest son stole my heart the moment he entered my life. We have weathered storms together, and through it all, we've built something beautiful. He’s my boy and has my heart. His fiancée teases me that he knows he can get whatever he wants by just asking, and I am happy to do it. He taught me that boys are very simple, and we, as women, way over complicate them. I think we taught each other that blood isn’t thicker than love.

My younger daughter is teaching me compassion—for myself. She is teaching me boundaries and showing me that taking care of myself is also taking care of my children. She is kind and sweet but also spicy. She is my sidekick.

And my youngest? My wild child is teaching me patience. He's teaching me to hold a hug until he lets go and to stop long enough to smell the roses. He is also teaching me about my weird quirks that he inherited that I never knew I had; such as, socks not being on correctly or how really chaotic my organized chaos is.

I am the same mother.

But I am also not.

I have changed.

I have grown.

I have healed.

I have broken.

I have experienced unimaginable joy and devastating pain.

Every one of those experiences has shaped the mother I am to each child.

So why would we expect our own parents to have remained the exact same people throughout their lives?

Why do we struggle so much with allowing our loved ones to be complicated?

Perhaps because it's easier to place people neatly into categories.

But healing often begins when we stop forcing people into boxes.

Sometimes the people we love most are also the people who hurt us most.

Sometimes our heroes disappoint us.

Sometimes our villains showed us love in ways no one else could.

And sometimes, if we're lucky, we become old enough to hold all of those truths in the same hand.

Reading Morgan's tribute left me incredibly proud of her father and of her. She is working through her own baggage and healing as she grows older. Something that isn’t easy, and as she is doing this, she is helping others too. My cousin did a fantastic job with his kids who love and respect him, and he did it his way and as a single dad.

But it also left me heartbroken.

Heartbroken that he didn't always get the version of my Uncle Sal that I did.

Heartbroken that families are messy.

Heartbroken that love is rarely simple.

But maybe that's the point.

Because understanding that people are complicated doesn't diminish the love we shared with them.

It deepens it.

It humanizes it.

And perhaps the greatest gift we can give both ourselves and those who came before us is this:

To stop asking whether they were heroes or villains.

And instead ask,

"Who were they, really?"

Because somewhere in that answer, we often find pieces of ourselves.

And maybe, just maybe, we find grace too.

XO, Janthina