Angelos lived, loved, laughed

By Tiffany Strong
The Herald Gazette Reporter

ROCKLAND (Dec 20): "Give me tenderloin or give me death."


This was the response that Mark Angelos gave when people suggested he go on a macrobiotic diet.



Mark Angelos in his beloved kitchen in 1987, showing off his perfectly stuffed, ready to be baked lobster. (Image courtesy of Nancy Angelos)



Mark was all about food, said his wife, Nancy Angelos.

"Mark relished food," said close friend Phil Clayton.

So much so that another close friend, Morgan Kirkham, shot a video of Mark called "Steak Night."

"The challenge," said Mark on the video, "is barbecuing from bed."

Angelos, of Rockland, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1982 at the age of 29. In 2004, at the age of 51, he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease.

"Multiple sclerosis is bad, ALS is a death sentence," said Nancy, a registered nurse since 1995.



Mark Angelos and his son David on Easter 1988. (Image courtesy of Nancy Angelos)



Despite the staggering blow, Mark and Nancy and their two grown children, Megan and David, decided they were not going to let the disease get the best of them.

Nancy said they still had a lot of things they wanted to do. "So we decided to make lemonade from lemons," she said.

They traveled, went to plays, went to concerts, went camping, visited friends and family, and attended the North Atlantic Blues Festival in Rockland.

In essence, they lived, laughed, cooked and ate.



Mark Angelos with his family on a cruise to Cancun, Mexico, in 2006. From left are Nancy, David and Megan. (Image courtesy of Nancy Angelos)



"If Mark cooked, I cleaned up," said Nancy. "If I cooked, I cleaned up. So he cooked."

But no matter what, Mark was the chef, Nancy said. "Cooking is in his genes," she said. "He was a chef through and through. "

"I was the sous-chef," she said. As time went by and Mark became less able to cook, Nancy began to take over the cooking duties. But she always checked with him before she made a move in the kitchen.

"I felt like I was on a food show," she said.

Mark was thrilled when his son David decided to follow in his footsteps. David went to school at the Culinary Institute in Hyde Park, N.Y. He graduated in 2005 and is now the chef at Amalfi's Restaurant in Rockland.

Mark's other legacy was his humor. "He could always make me laugh," Nancy said. "He was so funny."

Nancy said she and Mark would go to the grocery store just for entertainment. As she wheeled Mark around in his wheelchair he would strike up conversations with other shoppers. "He would talk to a stranger in the produce section for 30 minutes about jalapeno peppers," she said.

"He would laugh and people aisles away would immediately know Mark was in the store," she said. "His laugh was that memorable."

In fact, Megan made a DVD of her father's life with pictures and music, titled, "Fifty-five years of living, loving, laughing and eating." In it, to the tune of "Here Comes the Sun" by the Beatles, are photos of Mark with his family, cuddled up with his children, with his wife in Hawaii, on a trip of a lifetime in Greece with extended family, carving a turkey, dressed up for Halloween, cooking lobster, and just having fun.

In May 2006 Mark made the difficult decision to have a tracheotomy so that he could be connected to a ventilator. Breathing had become too difficult for him as the ALS had begun affecting his lungs. He knew that without one he wouldn't live much longer.

It turned out he was right. Doctors told him he would have survived only three or four more weeks without it.

Nancy said he decided to go through with it because as he told her, "I think I'm going to miss something big."

After initial complications, Nancy got her husband back for two more years. And what Mark gained was a core belief in God. He gained peace from the inside out. He gained love, grace and strength. He came to believe in life after death.



Mark Angelos at the North Atlantic Blues Festival in Rockland in July 2007. (Image courtesy of Nancy Angelos)



He went on to do some more of the things he loved, such as going to a Steely Dan concert with his wife and friends, camping out in hospital beds in friends' living rooms, laughing, cooking and eating.

He and Nancy also began listening to a particular book on tape, "Tuesdays with Morrie" by Mitch Albom. It is the true story of Morrie Schwartz, who is dying of ALS, and his relationship with his former student, Albom. They meet on Tuesdays and Albom learns lessons on how to live.

As time passed for Mark, the disease robbed his body of more and more of its functions.

On July 12 of this year Mark and Nancy went to the North Atlantic Blues Festival in Rockland as they had every summer. That Saturday night when they got home, Mark said to Nancy, "I don't want to do this anymore."

At first Nancy thought he meant he didn't want to go back to the festival the following day.

But soon she understood that Mark meant much more than that.

He said he hadn't felt like a part of the crowd. His voice was so low that he had begun wearing a small microphone so that people could hear him. But still, he would have to repeat things three and four times. "By then," he told Nancy, "it's not funny anymore."

Nancy had made a promise to Mark in May 2006 when he decided to go on the ventilator that he was in charge. He would be the one to make the decisions. His children too had agreed to this.

By this past summer his body had completely shut down. He could no longer physically do anything for himself. It took him an hour to eat anything because he would choke. But he could think. And his faith gave him the courage to say he'd had enough.

From listening to "Tuesdays with Morrie," Mark got the idea that he wanted to have a living wake.

"So that's what we did," Nancy said. At one point she asked her daughter Megan, "How do we do this? How do we plan something like this?"

In the end she said it just came together. They wanted to give everyone a chance to come who wanted to be there, so they postponed it a bit to accommodate people who lived out of state.

People arrived from all over the country. "They came out of the woodwork," she said.

"One Saturday night we had more than 30 people at our house," she said. "Our friend Piero, a professional jazz guitarist, came and we had this big party with Mark in the middle. Everyone was singing, dancing, eating and drinking."

Nancy said it went on like this for a month, with memories, laughter, tears, love and feasting.

Mark also loved to play guitar. He owned a Les Paul gold top that he ultimately gave to his son-in-law Chris when he could no longer play it.

"Another night we ended up having a similar party," Nancy said. "People just kept arriving. A lot of our musician friends came with their guitars. Chris came with Mark's Les Paul, Dan Merrill, a guitarist from Portland, came and sat on a stool by Mark. We had birthday cake and singing and we had another beautiful, unbelievable party."

"Everyone felt so blessed that they had the opportunity to say goodbye," she said. "He meant a lot to a lot of people."

Mark died on his 55th birthday, Sept. 16, 2008.

At his funeral, Judith Carpenter gave his eulogy, saying: "I do so with the clear recognition that words are totally inadequate containers for the amazing bigness of Mark's life and for the radiance and peace he came to at the end."


The Herald Gazette Reporter Tiffany Strong can be reached at 207-594-5351 or by e-mail at tstrong@villagesoup.com.