Good night, Rob.
Apr. 21st, 2003 11:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
e_julianaToday was Rob's memorial. It was standing-room only and beyond. Zach spoke, other people spoke, it was good.
I only cried twice. Once, when Zach was speaking, and said "When he was in the more difficult stages of his illness, and you weren’t quite sure if he was with you or not at that moment, one thing always cued you in. His eyes would light up and his smile would beam at the simple sound of juliana’s voice. He was just crazy about her…."
sniff
And when Chet, Rob's father, presented Sadie, Rob's widow, with the folded American flag that every war veteran gets at their funeral.
Blessed be, Rob. Rest in peace.
In fact.
I am putting in the full text of Zach's eulogy for his father,
A statement of fact: My father was an amazing man. I pretty sure everyone here knows that. A long time ago, before my father was even first sick, we “discussed” this day, and what he’d want to have happen. And his biggest concern was that everyone would be so sad, and morose, and somber. And he didn’t want that. Or at least, I should say, he didn’t want ONLY that. He wanted laughter, and stories, and joking, smiles. He probably also wanted gambling and moonshine and prostitutes and a knifefight, but I didn’t see those options on the form when we rented the room, so sorry, Dad.
In the play Jeffrey, which juliana and some of you here are working on right now, one of the characters sums it up pretty well. “When did despair become enjoyable? Grief; yes, tears, of course; but terminal gloom? Who does that help?” Sums it up pretty well. He wanted us all to grieve, to have tears, but most of all, to have fun. So, today, I wanted to share with you some of the best things about my father that made me and everyone around him laugh and smile…
When I was 11, my father played the Walter Matthau role in our little league team’s version of the Bad News Bears. Man, we sucked. And the biggest thing I remember about that whole summer, was that my Dad never got upset, no matter how many bad plays we made, how many strikeouts we had, how many games we lost. He just stood on the side with Dan Dahl and laughed and cheered and laughed. Sometimes with us, sometimes at us (lots of the time at us). But he just loved being there.
When I was in eleventh grade, my dad came home from two weeks of hunting in Montana to find he had lost his house key. So, his buddy and him drove up to the high school and my Dad wandered in at 10 AM to find me. In his hunting clothes. Two weeks worth of beard. Several days shy of a shower. Covered in deer blood. Just walked in, and started wandering around. (clearly school security was not the issue then that it is now.) Luckily, one of the first places he passed was the gym, where my friend Rachel was in class –he stuck his head in and called her name – she told the gym coach she was going to take him to find me, it’s okay, that’s zach’s dad – and the gym coach said “Okay!” – and then turned to our friend Aaron and said “Follow. Her.”
In one of my college shows, I played an old russian man living in the depression in a halfway home – the costumer and I decided that we should base the look of the character on my father for makeup, facial hair, etc. It worked pretty well. (There’s a picture of us out there somewhere from the lobby that night). And my Dad’s first response when I came out after opening night was “Hey, there’s a guy in your show who looks just like me!”
When we restaged Escape From Happiness last year, we were having trouble finding a replacement for the actor who played Tom, the raving, semi-psychotic father figure in the show. It was one of my dad’s favorite shows, and at one point Matt suggested having my dad play the role. When I approached him about it, he said “was that the guy in the bathrobe who was pretending to be sick, then ranted and yelled and threw people around? – Yeah, I could do that.”
He thought the best way to celebrate the fourth of July was to hang mexican flags in the yard and eat burritos and tacos and drink tequila.
He once, after Kate had complained of being cold at dinner, thought the best option for her was to wear his full one piece caution orange hunting suit.
He knew the value of a well timed snowball ambush on a pack of unsuspecting 10 year olds.
He once spent an entire afternoon in the backyard with me and Adam, teaching us how to properly throw a knife into a tree.
When it was announced that he and my mother would be the chaperones for the second year in a row on the junior/senior class theater field trip, every student in the room burst into cheers and applause (much, I am sure, to the chagrin of every other parent in the room. Who are these people?)
He grilled outside in the wintertime.
He let me drive the brand new royal blue ford mustang convertible around the city highways with him the day after they got it, and when we got home, asked “Did you have fun?” When I said yes, he said “Good, because you’re never driving this again.”
When he was in the more difficult stages of his illness, and you weren’t quite sure if he was with you or not at that moment, one thing always cued you in. His eyes would light up and his smile would beam at the simple sound of juliana’s voice. He was just crazy about her….
He had a laugh I could place anywhere in a theater.
He resignedly let me quit the swim team my freshmen year so I could audition for “some play”. After he saw the show, he never said another word about sports. And until he got sick, he never missed a show.
If you’ve ever seen a fifty foot penguin show, and saw an odd set piece or prop or piece of furniture, and wondered “where did they find that?” He found it – usually in about 8 minutes. With options.
He loved theater. At first, only because it was what I did, and how could he not if I was up there. But his appreciation for it grew, and he soon was discussing it in depth with me after certain shows that really moved him. And one night, in 1999, after 13 hours of slides and conversation and stories and 2 bottles of scotch, Jon Olsen and Dad and I walked away with the ground plans for War Golems, which I think says more about him as a whole in one hour than I could sum up in a week. And what I remember most, was that he really never understood why we wanted to do that show. He asked me “Why would anyone want to see this?” And I never had a better answer than “Because it’s interesting.” – And today, I think I can safely say a perfectly fine answer would have been, “Because it’s about you.”
He loved the theater, and he loved that I did theater. When he finally passed, he did it in the 48 hours between closing of one of my shows, and first read through of the next. Was the man good or what? I think he knew….
In the last week, so many of you have been so supportive and generous and helpful in dealing with all this, and the one thing that makes me very happy, is so many of you told me, that you could tell how proud he was of me. And you were right. And the reason for that is very simple. I did a lot of things that made him proud, because I did them for him. Because I was so proud of him, and I was so proud that he was my father.
To quote Lanford Wilson, my father “left awfully big footprints”. I’m just glad we wore the same size shoes.
I only cried twice. Once, when Zach was speaking, and said "When he was in the more difficult stages of his illness, and you weren’t quite sure if he was with you or not at that moment, one thing always cued you in. His eyes would light up and his smile would beam at the simple sound of juliana’s voice. He was just crazy about her…."
sniff
And when Chet, Rob's father, presented Sadie, Rob's widow, with the folded American flag that every war veteran gets at their funeral.
Blessed be, Rob. Rest in peace.
In fact.
I am putting in the full text of Zach's eulogy for his father,
A statement of fact: My father was an amazing man. I pretty sure everyone here knows that. A long time ago, before my father was even first sick, we “discussed” this day, and what he’d want to have happen. And his biggest concern was that everyone would be so sad, and morose, and somber. And he didn’t want that. Or at least, I should say, he didn’t want ONLY that. He wanted laughter, and stories, and joking, smiles. He probably also wanted gambling and moonshine and prostitutes and a knifefight, but I didn’t see those options on the form when we rented the room, so sorry, Dad.
In the play Jeffrey, which juliana and some of you here are working on right now, one of the characters sums it up pretty well. “When did despair become enjoyable? Grief; yes, tears, of course; but terminal gloom? Who does that help?” Sums it up pretty well. He wanted us all to grieve, to have tears, but most of all, to have fun. So, today, I wanted to share with you some of the best things about my father that made me and everyone around him laugh and smile…
When I was 11, my father played the Walter Matthau role in our little league team’s version of the Bad News Bears. Man, we sucked. And the biggest thing I remember about that whole summer, was that my Dad never got upset, no matter how many bad plays we made, how many strikeouts we had, how many games we lost. He just stood on the side with Dan Dahl and laughed and cheered and laughed. Sometimes with us, sometimes at us (lots of the time at us). But he just loved being there.
When I was in eleventh grade, my dad came home from two weeks of hunting in Montana to find he had lost his house key. So, his buddy and him drove up to the high school and my Dad wandered in at 10 AM to find me. In his hunting clothes. Two weeks worth of beard. Several days shy of a shower. Covered in deer blood. Just walked in, and started wandering around. (clearly school security was not the issue then that it is now.) Luckily, one of the first places he passed was the gym, where my friend Rachel was in class –he stuck his head in and called her name – she told the gym coach she was going to take him to find me, it’s okay, that’s zach’s dad – and the gym coach said “Okay!” – and then turned to our friend Aaron and said “Follow. Her.”
In one of my college shows, I played an old russian man living in the depression in a halfway home – the costumer and I decided that we should base the look of the character on my father for makeup, facial hair, etc. It worked pretty well. (There’s a picture of us out there somewhere from the lobby that night). And my Dad’s first response when I came out after opening night was “Hey, there’s a guy in your show who looks just like me!”
When we restaged Escape From Happiness last year, we were having trouble finding a replacement for the actor who played Tom, the raving, semi-psychotic father figure in the show. It was one of my dad’s favorite shows, and at one point Matt suggested having my dad play the role. When I approached him about it, he said “was that the guy in the bathrobe who was pretending to be sick, then ranted and yelled and threw people around? – Yeah, I could do that.”
He thought the best way to celebrate the fourth of July was to hang mexican flags in the yard and eat burritos and tacos and drink tequila.
He once, after Kate had complained of being cold at dinner, thought the best option for her was to wear his full one piece caution orange hunting suit.
He knew the value of a well timed snowball ambush on a pack of unsuspecting 10 year olds.
He once spent an entire afternoon in the backyard with me and Adam, teaching us how to properly throw a knife into a tree.
When it was announced that he and my mother would be the chaperones for the second year in a row on the junior/senior class theater field trip, every student in the room burst into cheers and applause (much, I am sure, to the chagrin of every other parent in the room. Who are these people?)
He grilled outside in the wintertime.
He let me drive the brand new royal blue ford mustang convertible around the city highways with him the day after they got it, and when we got home, asked “Did you have fun?” When I said yes, he said “Good, because you’re never driving this again.”
When he was in the more difficult stages of his illness, and you weren’t quite sure if he was with you or not at that moment, one thing always cued you in. His eyes would light up and his smile would beam at the simple sound of juliana’s voice. He was just crazy about her….
He had a laugh I could place anywhere in a theater.
He resignedly let me quit the swim team my freshmen year so I could audition for “some play”. After he saw the show, he never said another word about sports. And until he got sick, he never missed a show.
If you’ve ever seen a fifty foot penguin show, and saw an odd set piece or prop or piece of furniture, and wondered “where did they find that?” He found it – usually in about 8 minutes. With options.
He loved theater. At first, only because it was what I did, and how could he not if I was up there. But his appreciation for it grew, and he soon was discussing it in depth with me after certain shows that really moved him. And one night, in 1999, after 13 hours of slides and conversation and stories and 2 bottles of scotch, Jon Olsen and Dad and I walked away with the ground plans for War Golems, which I think says more about him as a whole in one hour than I could sum up in a week. And what I remember most, was that he really never understood why we wanted to do that show. He asked me “Why would anyone want to see this?” And I never had a better answer than “Because it’s interesting.” – And today, I think I can safely say a perfectly fine answer would have been, “Because it’s about you.”
He loved the theater, and he loved that I did theater. When he finally passed, he did it in the 48 hours between closing of one of my shows, and first read through of the next. Was the man good or what? I think he knew….
In the last week, so many of you have been so supportive and generous and helpful in dealing with all this, and the one thing that makes me very happy, is so many of you told me, that you could tell how proud he was of me. And you were right. And the reason for that is very simple. I did a lot of things that made him proud, because I did them for him. Because I was so proud of him, and I was so proud that he was my father.
To quote Lanford Wilson, my father “left awfully big footprints”. I’m just glad we wore the same size shoes.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2003-04-22 05:46 am (UTC)I'm so sorry for your loss.
"Damn, I wish I had known him."
Date: 2003-04-22 07:06 am (UTC)I wish everyone could have met him.
Yesterday was the first day that I realized how much I miss Rob. We've spent a year taking care of him and knowing him as a sick person, and it's taken a bit to remember him as he was, not as he became.
He was a decent human being, and a good man. Not necessarily an easy one, but a fun one to know.
Re: "Damn, I wish I had known him."
Date: 2003-04-22 07:34 am (UTC)Yup. Me too. And it really is a blessing for all of you to be able to remember him as he was.
no subject
Date: 2003-04-22 01:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-04-22 05:03 pm (UTC)*allergies*