The Torch Carrier is a memoir of a young widower.  Antonio who after losing his wife and high school sweetheart Cynthia to Breast Cancer, turns to his journal and nightly dreams about his wife to find solace in his newly transparent existence.  When the B side to his new life as a widower (Single and Available) forces him to address this status it is Cynthia who helps guide him through his emotional awkwardness of starting over as he turns to pen and pad to secure a relationship with an old friend.  It is this woman Nereida who possesses the qualities he prayed for, so Antonio tries to convince Nereida that they were meant to be. The problem? He’s not ready for an intimate relationship, and Nereida  has just become available. Antonio knows she won’t be on the market whenever he does become ready, so he leaps forward hoping his instincts are right even if the rest of his life isn’t.  Through letters and poems he regains his identity as a person and man while juggling his pining emotions for his wife as he finds the balance in his heart and a new appreciation for love the second time around.

Antonio Richardson has worked the last 20 years in the Broadcast Industry. He began his career as a Broadcast System Design Engineer but after some restructuring within his company found himself in the operational end of the business. This change coincided with a major changes in his personal life. He and his wife Cynthia had just passed the remission stage of  her bout with Breast Cancer and Antonio was returning to work after an extended absence due to a company strike. Antonio found himself financially and emotionally spent.  It was during this period that Antonio turned to writing to get a grip on his life as a husband, father and possible widower that he found the inner calm of reflection and an old love for writing. So he continued to write over the next 15 years sharing his words with only a select few. After the death of his wife Cynthia writing became more of a means of survival and later the voice he used to articulate his emotions when he had to start his life anew. Thus leading him to The Torch Carrier a memoir which started out as a compilations of letters poems and sonnets which when strung together told the story and transformation of his life and battle of lost and found. Antonio continues to work in the television and has held various jobs. He is currently an Operation’s Supervisor at NBC, Inc. for The Today Show with Katie Couric and Matt Lauer, The Weekend Today Show and  on occasion Nightly News with Tom Brokaw.  As his professional life became ever changing and exposing him more to the power of text so has his passion for writing, thus  leading Antonio to consider writing as more than just a  recreational or therapeutic aspect of his life. 

He has maintained residence in Westchester County of New York just 15 miles north of Manhattan where he resides with his family. Still surrounded by his core of friends and extended family members who watch over him. His family has expanded by two and half with Nereida and her daughter Lyndsay and occasionally Taylor his granddaughter as Lamont, Curtis and Ashley have grown into normal young adults with all the angst that follow.

In the end she only asked that I allow myself to love again, explained to me that I owed her nothing because she made sure she got hers up front and for once in my life be true to myself and if I didn’t then and only then would she haunt my mind. She thanked me for loving her so well and told me she was ready to go because she knew I was ready in all other facets of life. We watched our late night reruns as usual and she drifted off to sleep only to wake briefly to blink goodbye.

I never learned how not to miss Cynthia for myself because it was more natural for me to be buried in the midst of my responsibilities to my kids while I tried to complete those last honey-do items she had left behind as I tried to shape up our new house we bought just a little more than a year before her death. The concept of being a widower had been something I had been trying to mentally get use to for nine years as I looked over my shoulder for any sign of a relapse of Cynthia’s cancer. As a result, I learned to miss her not for me but for the kids. This was a weight my heart could bear. My mind just told my heart that she had gone away somewhere to do her own thing like she often did, I was use to that, my heart’s perspective could digest that far better than she had up and died on me after all the struggles she and I had been through.  

I am the tree that fell in the forest which nobody heard. My face carved in stoic expressions, chiseled by strength, prides and determination have muted all pleas of S. O. S. If only I could blink maybe the crowd passing by could hear my calls of despair . . . 

What was I thinking putting myself out on a limb like this it’s been a week since I noticed the beauty that is she and she keeps on babbling about her boyfriend and how great he is at this and good he is at that? She had become one of my most trusted friends and comrades. Why should I jeopardize such a great friendship cause my instincts are telling me something different? She thinks my more upbeat mood is because I’m coping more with my loss, crying less on her shoulder allows her to believe maybe I’m handling things better I’m just happy to see her for the 30 to 45 minutes she can spare before she goes on to the next phase of her busy day.

A casual conversation leads down a road, with highs of emotion never known. The crossings of our paths from friends to lovers appear to grow. A look of love, the heat of passion, a roaring laughter once again anew. Smiles reflecting a joy of bewilderment, yet calm of serenity we never knew. The ear is patient, the heart filled with pride, we the other individual in each other’s eye. A flash from the screeching sparks of our reality causes an off beat. The light begins to dim as our hearts begin to flutter. How were we to know we would be in sync, but not in time?

No matter what language spoken I do know that Love is universal and I am grateful to have experienced it at so many levels. I pay homage to her beauty, strength of her light and the nourishment she has fed me throughout my life as she threw her self upon my tired soul like a shawl strategically placed on my distress being. Call her Cynthia, call her Nereida, call her whatever you like I’d recognize her anywhere because I am a Torch Carrier member for life.