It’s been almost a month since we lost Anthony.
The shop is lifeless. Quiet. You can feel it the moment you walk in, something in the air that tells you something is wrong. Something is missing.
The anticipation of the funeral felt like it was never going to come. Every day felt long and in slow motion. That feeling of being defeated, sad, empty, it took over me. Like I had no purpose anymore.
This was such a huge loss for the community. So many people knew, loved, and respected Anthony. So many people, like me, are feeling lost, left picking up the pieces now that he’s gone.
A month before losing Anthony, I lost my mother-in-law. Anthony was there at that funeral, right beside us, showing up the way he always did. And months before that, when I wasn’t feeling right, he and Angel drove around to multiple ERs looking for me, they didn’t even know which one I was at, until they found me.
Ant’s text to me after finding me in the emergency room after driving all over town searching for me
He showed up for me then too. He always showed up.
I keep asking myself what I could have done differently. He wasn’t supposed to go yet. God was ready for him, but I wasn’t ready. He wasn’t, either. He always told me he was scared to die.
There were no signs. He never talked about his health declining. He just smiled and lived through his pain quietly, the way he did everything. The doctors couldn’t even explain how he’d been living in his condition.
The last text I got from him keeps playing on repeat in my head.
“Sup Dogg it’s time to go to the ER. I think everything I’ve been ignoring is knocking on the door.”
I never knew that night was going to be the last time I’d see him breathing.
When he passed, half of me passed too.
I believe that, for people who are truly blessed, you have two life partners, two people who walk with you and guide your journey in different ways.
You have your spouse, your soulmate, your romantic partner, the person who you grow your immediate family with.
But for me, I also had Anthony. He was my life coach, my advisor, the carrier of all my secrets. He knows things my wife doesn’t know, parts of me he took with him to his grave. He was a part of me. Part of me I’ll never get back now that he’s gone. It was a different type of relationship, but it went just as deep.
He wasn’t just a friend. He was everything to me.
Not many people are lucky enough to have a relationship like this in their lifetime. I try to remind myself of that when the pain feels too much to carry, that it was a blessing to have had him for the time he was here.
I wish I could turn back time. Just a little. Just enough to tell him how much I loved him and thank him for everything he ever did for me. I hope he’s looking down on me, realizing how much he meant to me. I pray these words reach him somehow.
The Weight of What’s Lost
Cassie, his daughter, reached out to me several days before the funeral and asked if I would speak at the service. I didn’t respond right away. I didn’t know if I could do it. I didn’t know if I was strong enough.
But how could I not? Especially when she was the one asking. I see Anthony in her, everytime I look at her.
I was also asked to be a pallbearer. To carry him out.
Laying my mother-in-law to rest
It was the second time in two months I’d done that. A month before, I carried my mother-in-law. Now I was carrying my best friend.
There are no words for what it feels like to carry the people you love like that. To have that weight in your hands and know it’s the last thing you’ll ever do for them.
Laying Anthony to rest, saying a final goodbye
How could I not show up for Anthony, one last time?
For his speech, I didn’t prepare anything. I had no notes. During the mass, after Cassie and the family had spoken, she came to me again and asked one more time, and something in me just moved. Like all the spirits inside me lifted me out of my seat and carried me up there. It was her that gave me the strength to go.
I spoke from the chest. Because that’s the only way I know how to talk about Anthony. Not from a page.
From everything inside me.
It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. Standing up there, 41 years of friendship behind me, the remainder of a lifetime without him in front of me, and trying to find words that were big enough.
No words could ever hold that weight.
Akoni, his son, got up and told a story that was so perfectly him I had to laugh through the tears.
When Akoni was younger, he’d done something to set Anthony off. And Anthony came at him with that walk, that look, the kind that made grown men reconsider their choices. Akoni looked up, grabbed his leg, bracing himself.
Anthony had his hand over his face. Trying to hide the laugh.
That was him. All of that intensity, and underneath it, this man who could barely keep a straight face when it counted. Who always knew how to make a room laugh. Always two sides to his personality.
Akoni also talked about how Ant loved his West Coast rap. Ice Cube, all of it. He was a part of that life for so long, it never really left him, even when he grew into a different man. Road raging down the freeway, music matching his mood. Then somewhere along the way he switched to reggae, said it calmed him down.
Until someone cut him off.
Then it was right back to Ice Cube. Right back to the streets of Cali, even when he was driving down the highways of Las Vegas. Right back to chasing down whoever tried to pull one over on him.
That’s Anthony. Hot and cold. Peaceful until he wasn’t. And when he wasn’t? God help you.
Built Without Fear
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: he was not scared of anyone. Not a single person on this earth.
Size meant nothing to him. I watched it firsthand. Big guys, small guys, it didn’t matter. He’d look right through you. If you crossed him, or crossed someone he loved, it was over. No hesitation.
There were people he had history with. Old beef. The kind that doesn’t just disappear. And those same people showed up to his funeral.
That tells you everything. Even his enemies respected him.
His Number One
Everywhere I walked at that service, I kept hearing something whispered around me.
“That’s Robert Pho. Anthony’s number one.”
His number one. Not the other way around.
I keep thinking about that. Because in my mind, he was mine. My right hand. My backbone. But to everyone who knew him, I was the one he claimed. The one he talked about. The one he was proud of.
His brother Aaron reached out to me after the service. He said: “Thank you for being the biggest part of my brother’s life. You gave him the confidence to go out there with you. You could have chose anyone to be your number one and you chose my Kuya. When no one gave him a chance, you did, and built an empire with him on your side.”
His daughter Kanani said it just as simply:
“You and the fam will always be one of the most important people in my dad’s life.”
Coming from his kids, those words mean everything.
Nobody Saw More Than He Did
What people don’t know — what I’ve never really talked about — is that Anthony helped me with my anger just as much as I helped him with his. Beneath it all, he was a peacemaker at his core.
I wasn’t always who I am now. I had a temper I couldn’t manage. The smallest things would set me off. And I mean small.
I remember one time in North Carolina, I went through a McDonald’s drive-through near the shop and they gave me bread so dense you could drop it on the floor and it would’ve sounded like metal hitting concrete. Something that minor, that insignificant, and I snapped. Went back in, threw it on the counter to show the manager how hard it was, told him to eat it, and threw it at his face when he wouldn’t.
That was me back then. An awful person when I was angry. I still had that rage inside me, the same rage that got me locked up. I couldn’t regulate myself.
Anthony saw all of it. Every embarrassing moment. Every time I went too far.
Every time, he’d reel me back in. Talk me down. Then he’d lift me up.
Two guys who both had fire in them, learning how to channel it into something better. We made each other calmer. Steadier. More measured over the years.
We made each other better men. Better husbands. Better fathers. Better role models. He was always my voice of reason.
I still can’t believe that voice is gone.
We Had So Many Plans
People don’t know how many things we tried to build together over the years.
We weren’t always the men we became. We had completely different ideas about what success looked like back then, ideas that make me shake my head now, just looking at my daughters.
When we first moved to North Carolina, back when we just had the flagship Skin Design location, the original plan wasn’t to open another tattoo shop. We were so close to opening up a strip club.
Back then, Anthony had just gotten out of a job working security for girls at another strip club. Drove them back and forth from clients houses and back, wherever the gig paid. It was a dangerous life for him, involved a lot of people with ill intentions and a short fuse, not a job for the faint of heart.
He didn’t want to keep doing it anymore. I talked him into moving to North Carolina with me. It made us think, ‘We could do that. We could open up a club of our own.’ He already knew the girls; they already trusted him.
We didn’t know what the plan was; we had no idea what we were doing. But since I was always into business, we thought we could figure it out together.
As a father to three girls, I can’t even imagine entertaining the idea now. That was a different era. A different version of us.
We were men still figuring out what they actually wanted to build and who they actually wanted to be.
The plan fell through. God had other plans, better ones. Because those same two guys ended up dedicating their lives to something completely different. Raising families. Building artists up. Creating opportunity. Trying to leave things better than we found them.
Anthony changed. I changed. We changed each other. That’s the part of the story I’ll always be most proud of.
Instead, I had Anthony run a shop, a second location called Illusionz. It wasn’t just tattoos; we sold everything. Retail, tobacco pipes, DVDs, whatever we could move. He was making good money piercing, his pockets always full.
We were also building out a performance car shop called Racers Edge Performance. We were both into cars. I had a ’96 Toyota Supra twin turbo I was fixing up, before Fast and Furious made that cool—Anthony loved driving it whenever he could, especially when I was out of town. Anthony had a lowered, fixed up Chevy pickup.
We had a pitbull kennel going too, Cyko Kennel Breeding, mostly Razors Edge bloodlines.
We did all this while waiting for the club to happen. Always running three things at once. Always hustling. Zoning issues, lease problems, trial and error, we hit every wall you could hit. It kept us from opening up the club, but in the end, it was a blessing—other doors opened that we could have missed otherwise.
We always had plans. Big things are coming, hang in there. I told him that so many times. And he always believed me. He trusted me completely.
I’ve never met another person with loyalty like that. Unbreakable.
He wrote to me in prison. One of the few people who did, alongside my wife. He never stopped showing up for me, even when I was locked away with nothing to offer in return.
I was going to take care of him. A portion of the book. I had plans to bring laser removal back to him after the state regulations took that from him a few years ago—after he’d been doing it for over ten years—when the new laws came into effect. Other things in the pipeline. He knew it was coming.
When we were kids, I used to say: If I ever drive a BMW, you will too. That was the dream, something that felt completely out of reach for two kids from where we came from. I got him the Dodge Charger. He picked it out himself and was so proud of that car, right up until the very end.
But more than the car, it was what it symbolized. If I go up, he goes up with me. I always wanted to do more for him.
When we moved to Hawaii in 2018, I tried everything to get him to come with us. He wanted to so badly. But he stayed — for Lil Ant, to be there for him and his career in Muay Thai, and for his lady Shane.
That was Anthony. Always putting the people he loved before what he wanted.
He stood by my side for over four decades. Even when I had nothing. He had my back during our banging days when we were kids and every day since. I’m still asking myself how to hang on to everything without him here next to me.
Stories Left Unfinished
I’ve been hearing from people since the funeral. Clients, old friends reaching out with stories about Anthony I didn’t even know.
He helped so many people quit smoking. Found a book that worked for him and shared it with anyone who would listen. That was him; if something changed his life, he wanted it to change yours too.
He gave quietly. Without making it about himself. He made people feel safe. Supported. Heard.
That’s a legacy I’ll carry forward. It’s what Anthony would want.
Walking Out of That Church
My brother. My best friend.
When the funeral was over, I walked out of that Catholic church — the priest had blessed him, which Anthony would’ve found both funny and fitting — and I felt more lost than I’ve felt in a long time.
He lived by his own code. Not a religious book. Not a label. Just loyalty, love, and an unshakeable sense of who he was and what he stood for. That’s its own kind of faith.
Days after the funeral, my chest pains sent me to the ER. Angel and Bella sat and slept in that hospital lobby for seven hours waiting for me, the same way they sat with me waiting in that hospital when Anthony first got admitted.
The stress, the grief, it was real. It was physical. Seems like the pain from loss doesn’t just live in your heart. It lives in your body too.
Angel was also one of the closest people to Anthony. He and I were the last ones standing at the burial. At the service, Angel said something that’s stayed with me:
“Anthony was a gem in my life.”
That’s the only way to say it. That’s exactly what he was.
I cried every day after he passed. Thought I was all cried out. Then the funeral came and everything came back. It didn’t feel like closure; it felt like ripping open a fresh wound, all over again.
My mind keeps playing like an old record. From kids growing up together, watching each other’s backs, winding up in the same hood, going to prison, writing letters back and forth, to linking up after and building something real, side by side. We both knew each other’s darkest sides. And we watched each other grow out of them.
He was as solid as they came. As real as they came.
Right now my chest is still heavy. The energy I usually run on, the thing that keeps me showing up for my apprentices, my family, the people depending on me, it’s harder to find. I don’t know how much of it I have left, how much of it I’ll have to rebuild. I don’t know if I should stay in Vegas. It feels empty without him here.
I don’t know anything for sure anymore. The only thing I can do is let time take its course.
I think about Vanna. The girls. The family. I try to let that pull me forward. Some days it works. Most days it doesn’t.
I’m going to keep going. Because stopping isn’t an option, even when part of me wishes it was.
But right now, I’m letting myself feel this. The absence. The quiet where his voice used to be. The phone that won’t ring on my birthday with that same line, every year without fail.
We still breathing, Dogg.
I’m still breathing, Ant. I’m just trying to figure out what that means without you on the other end.
Thank You
To his kids — Cassie, Akoni, Kanani, and Lil Ant — your dad was one of the greatest people I’ve ever known. He loved you more than you’ll ever fully understand. And the fact that Cassie gave me the strength to walk up there and speak for him proves just how much of him lives in you.
To everyone who showed up for him — the old friends, the people from high school all grown up with families of their own, the ones who drove hours, the ones who flew in from Canada, Hawaii, North Carolina, all over, the clients, the community — he deserved every single person in that room.
And to everyone reaching out to support me through this: I see you. I feel it. It means more than I can say right now.
Everything I have, I owe so much of it to him. From the streets, to getting out, to building all of this.
I’m so thankful for the years we had together. For the memories I’ll hold onto for the rest of my life.
We carry him forward together. His loyalty. His love. His protection. His laugh he tried so hard to hide but never could.
As his brother Aaron would say, ‘Nobody has a smile like my brother.’
Rest easy, Ant. You were the best of us.
41 years wasn’t enough. It never would have been. But God, I’m grateful for every single one.
‘Til we meet again, brother. ‘Til the wheels fall off.
