August 24, 2017 — Candace Unis, who will speak at Saturday’s annual Fishermen’s Memorial Service of the grief of losing a loved one to the sea, knows of which she speaks.
In September 1978, her father left on a Sunday for two days of fishing on his nephew’s 52-foot trawler and was never seen again.
There were no mayday calls, no signs of distress.
The boat, the Alligator, went down — possibly hit by a freighter — with three men onboard: Unis’s 55-year-old father, James Sinagra, his 46-year-old nephew, Carlo “Bronco” Sinagra; and a 26-year-old crewman, Glenn Guitarr. It was the second boat lost out of Gloucester that month, with a total of nine lives lost, and to Unis, who was 25 at the time, it was a wound that would never really heal.
“I wish they would strike the word closure from the dictionary,” Unis said this week. Now a grief counselor with an active consultancy here in her native Gloucester, Unis says she believes there is no such thing as closure to the loss of a loved one, and there shouldn’t be. “They will always be there in who we are, and to seek closure from that is, I think, to diminish who they were.”