Why I Miss Tony Soprano

Yesterday James Gandolfini passed away after suffering a heart attack at age 51. If you've been living under a rock since the late 1990s, James Gandolfini played Tony Soprano on the popular HBO series The Sopranos from 1999 through 2007, ending in an epic finale that left everyone wondering why the screen went black at the end. How did it really end? Does anyone die? Does anyone survive? Why is Meadow taking so long to get into the freaking restaurant? Why does Journey keep telling us not to stop believing? What should we believe? Does Tony Soprano finally get his in the end or does he live out his days in suburban purgatory?

No one really knows. But we do know that the man who played Tony Soprano so well died suddenly at an all too young age. May he rest in peace.

Hearing about Mr. Gandolfini's untimely demise made me nostalgic for days gone by. I was suddenly taken back to evenings many years ago, when our children were much smaller and life was much different than it is now. I've been struck in recent days with the realization that life is changing at a rapid pace, even though it seems to go slowly while we are in a particular stage of it. Saying goodbye to Tony Soprano made me stop and notice that I've already said goodbye to an important stage of my life without realizing it.

John and I didn't start watching the Sopranos until a few years after it aired on HBO. We'd heard from friends that it was the show to watch, but we didn't have HBO so we decided to wait for it to come out on DVD. This was before the invention of On Demand and Netflix. It almost makes it seem like a bygone era when you had to rent DVDs in order to catch up on a show.

We got the first season of Sopranos on DVD from Netflix and immediately became hooked. We developed a habit of getting Jack to bed nice and early (how I miss those days when we were kid-free by 7 p.m.!), grabbing a few beers and retreating to our lower level family room in our townhouse to watch the Sopranos. Quite often we'd get to the end of one episode and give each other sideways glances, at which point I'd quickly click "next episode" and then pause the DVD while John got a couple more beers. Occasionally we'd go really crazy and watch a third episode and (gasp!) stay up past midnight on a work night.

We did this with a lot of shows: Lost, 24, Six Feet Under - but the Sopranos really stuck with us since it was on the air for so long. The Sopranos became like our second family. By the time we were watching the final season, we'd bought a new house, had another child, signed up for HBO and were all caught up. We watched that last, frustrating episode with the rest of the Sopranos-viewing nation, desperate to know what happens to Tony Soprano and feeling royally jipped when the screen went black.

Now we know what happens to Tony Soprano, or at least the actor that played him. We know that he was a human being like anyone else and like the rest of us, his time on Earth was not guaranteed. His death reminds me not just of my past but of my own short time in this world.

Time for me to go watch the next episode of Weeds. That's my latest addiction. It's no Sopranos though.

Miss these guys . . .