I just found out moments ago that a very, very dear friend who I haven't seen in years passed away sometime in the last year or two. I found out when I found his wife, my friend Patti, on Facebook.
It seems such a bad way to learn that someone has died. It's my own fault though. I haven't kept in touch with Rob and Patti on a regular basis since I moved away from Ontario to BC back in 1991. We called and wrote and saw each other very sporadically in the years after that. The last time I saw Patti was when she brought one of her girls to Ottawa two summers ago.
I can't believe Rob is gone. For some reason he seemed like one of those people who would just always be there. He survived so much. How could he be gone? I don't even know how he died yet. I can't bring myself to call Patti because I'm still too shocked and crying too much and it would be too difficult to carry on a conversation like this. I'll call her in a day or two when I've processed this.
One thought keeps going through my mind...does Phil know? Phil (my ex husband) and Rob were best-best friends for a long, long time. I think Rob was probably the best friend Phil ever had. Certainly the closest, the most intimate. They met at the Gulf refinery (now PetroCan) in Mississauga soemthing like eight years before I met Phil....that would be in the mid-70s, I guess.
Soon after I started living with Phil sometime around 1983, I met Rob and Patti. They came over to our place for dinner one night. I can't remember if I'd met Rob before that -- probably -- but I know I hadn't met Patti yet. They brought their new baby, Sarah, with them. Their first child. I remember trying to figure out how to heat the milk for her in a home that just wasn't equipped for a baby.
Rob was a loveable, hyper-active, alpha-male type goofball who we all loved, and loved even more when he and Patti had naturally conceived triplets, one of whom turned out to have cerebral palsy. Phil and I would go over to their house almost every weekend and help with the babies and, as they grew, entertained them a bit and hopefully gave mum and dad a bit of a break. We spent every New Year's Eve with them too, looking forward all year to Patti's luscious dessert, sex in a pan. She never allowed me to have the recipe till after I'd moved away. I don't even know if I still have it!
Three weeks before his triplets were born, Rob fell 12 feet from a scaffold at work and sustained a severe head injury. He was off work for a very long time. A year or so after the accident, after all the progress he'd made, he suffered a seizure and lost all the ground he'd gained since the accident, plus a lot more. He lost his sense of smell. He lost his driver's licence for a long time. He lost a lot that I don't even know about.
Rob and Patti and their children were, for me, the illustration of a family. Always together. Working hard, getting through all the many, many obstacles they faced. And always, at least when I saw him, Rob had a smile on his face and a smart remark that would make us all laugh. He loved his daughters soooo much. He loved his wife. He loved his friends.
I'm sorry I had to find out this way. I'm sorry I was oblivious to what Patti was going through and couldn't offer even what little comfort I could have. I'm sorry Rob is gone. I can't believe it. He was supposed to live forever.
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