A friend writes:
Hope the ceremony for Rob was healing.
It was. It was not at all as wrenching as I had feared. I had been worried about being overwhelmed by memories of Rob, walking into his house again, a place so unmistakably his, only to miss him even more acutely. Perhaps we were lucky that the service was planned for more than six weeks after Rob's death, for it would have been unbearable shortly thereafter.
The backyard had been transformed by Rob's landscaping efforts over the past year. Instead of a dusty hill rolling down to the barn there was a real lawn and garden made level with a retaining wall. Passionflowers poked out of the trellises forming the border along the wall. People gathered outside: Rob's mother; his sister Claire, her husband, and their children; Cory, Rob's neighbor and daily companion these last few months; Chuck Fisher, Rob's right-hand man during his illness; and Terry Bartlett, Rob's former lover and housemate, along with a collection of neighbors, colleagues and net friends. Oriana, Rob's horse, was in the barn entertaining guests and begging to be fed a handful of oats.
After about an hour of chatting, munching and milling about, people gathered in a circle in his backyard taking turns giving testimony to what Rob meant to each of us, some funny, some bittersweet, some quite painful and heartbreaking, but all wonderful. This seems to be a Quaker-ish form of remembrance which has evolved in secular circles; and it is tremendously moving as the impressions accumulate. There were so many different ways that Rob touched people's lives, and we were able to hear many of them, many of whom did not or could not give voice on the net.
Once this was over, the barbeque started, and it was for all intents just like all of Rob's wonderful barbeques, though sadly diminished by his absence. Like earlier times, I managed to meet some folks whom I'd only known electronically, and I felt no less privileged this time.
I want to thank Chuck and Claire for coordinating and organizing
this. I could recognize in his mother and sister that dull ache of
loss which only grows weaker with time, but never really
disappears. I hope everyone's presence helped that healing along
a bit.
