Picture this: Two condemned men at ease together, Rob and I, in vinyl recliners at the MCCM treatment center. We met there after connecting through my blog. ([10. This blog, that is.]) Despite broken speech and memory lapses from an inoperable brain tumor, he wore a warm and hopeful smile.
He gave me a chance to be his friend, asking only that I listen. He searched for words and struggled to maintain his attention, but I saw he was determined to express his thoughts. I wanted to show him that I would wait for him to find his words, that I would face him attentively, and calmly, and just listen.
“What kind of music do you like?”, he asked me. I mentioned an excellent compilation of piano jazz my father-in-law had given me. He was curious. He said he was a huge Phish fan. ([20. It’s questionable whether Rob ever said “huge”, but he was clear about his dedication to Phish.])
I said “I saw them in Portland, at the Civic Center, on New Year’s Eve, ’93. Aquarium Tour.” I was 18 years old then.
Sometimes Rob would begin to speak, stammer, bear down, pause, then give up with a shrug of his one good shoulder or a shake of his head. Sometimes our pauses circled yawning gulfs of time. Sometimes he regained himself, sometimes he didn’t.
A few days later, Rob and his family (wife Kasey, eight-year-old son and five-year-old daughter) joined us at home for a pizza dinner. Rob shuffled up to the door. His bad hand was in a brace.
Our boys played, their mothers followed, laughing, and made a jolly scene, but Rob seemed depressed as we held down the couch. One of our cats stepped into his lap, sniffed, sampled Rob’s caresses and moved on without a backward glance. Fickle cats! Fickle fate.
I wanted desperately to give Rob hope. I put on the jazz CDs I had recommended, then anxiously steered our conversation. Had he considered physical therapy? His insurance would pay for it, why not try it? He could feel better, gain strength, live a little longer. Use it or lose it, right?
But I pushed us too close to ends he feared to consider, and he pulled back, saying he preferred not to speak of it. We let it go, let it drown in the music. Finally, he seemed not to relent but commit to the effort, saying with his soft, stumbling voice that, yes, he would try it.
That’s the last I heard of it.
A few weeks later, Rob asked me to visit him. I found him slouched in a well-worn armchair on the sun-porch of his home in Cape Elizabeth. This was his last redoubt. Once a computer wiz and guitar hero, he’d given up selling his old instruments on eBay, stopped blogging or even using his computer, his iPad, or his iPhone.
The tiny, sparely finished room only had space for two chairs. I put on a jazz CD, brought each of us a soda from the kitchen and settled next to Rob. The strong April sun poured in, with a trace of the cold April wind. Forsythia bloomed. Cats prowled the neighborhood and squirrels foraged warily.
I was surprised to see a wheelchair folded up in the corner, and to see it had only tiny wheels. Anyway, I supposed he wouldn’t have the strength or coordination to push it himself. Such did each day diminish his body.
Did he want to go for a ride? Yes. We rolled up the street. We passed a yard where Rob’s son was playing with a friend. Rob smiled and waved. His son smiled and waved. “Hi Dad!” he shouted. And on we all went, not missing a beat.
But I was shaken, and a fear was cast out, that I would disgust and embarrass my own son, when the time came. Suddenly I saw our bond steeled against this withering of mere flesh. Rob was not the lawn-mowing, catch-playing All-American anchor of the family. Not anymore. Norman Rockwell never painted a Rob. No matter. ([30. Unsubstantiated but applicable to Rockwell’s upright and ordered world, which, admittedly, was not without generous and sensitive portrayals of humility. If you know of a wheelchair being depicted in any of his works, let me know.])
I never knew the old Rob, the vital, frenetic, hard-rocking and adventurous Rob. I was blind to the scope of his decline, and I think he liked that about me. No ghost of “the Rob we knew” would haunt us. We both wanted, I think, to be normal for a while. We devote so much to coping with our treatments and our disabilities, it’s easy to forget we share in the amusements and annoyances of everyday life. The weather. Bugs. Bad drivers.
When we talked, those are the types of things we talked about: arguably vacuous, certainly forgettable. It was not the words but the sound of the conversation that soothed us. We were, for a few hours, just a couple of prototypical old geezers just watching the world go by. We escaped the ubiquitous signals of our approaching doom. We escaped time.
Continuing our journey, we rolled through the neighborhood to a nursing home. Benches and tables were set out but empty. There were no signs of life, but granite stones celebrated the 100th birthdays of a fortunate few. Wouldn’t that be a treat? Turning back I guided us through an empty quarter of the parking lot, riding the back of the chair as if it were a grocery cart. Then I pulled the front wheels off the ground and balanced Rob’s weight on the rear wheels. For a second I felt like a 12-year-old boy again, somehow bored and adventurous and free and powerless all at the same time, trying to find a place where I belong.
The next time I saw Rob was at the hospice. On the prognostic scale of function vs. time to live, he probably had 3-4 weeks. I know he recognized me. His smile, again, was genuinely warm and joyful. But his eyes were losing their grip, blunted and soft. I brought out my iPhone and played the jazz again, the jazz I knew he liked.
I pulled a chair up to Rob’s bed and swiped through pictures on my iPhone. I could see he was looking at them. I hoped the sound of my voice would recall a pleasant feeling.
Then Kasey arrived with two friends who wore the anxious, slightly overwhelmed look of people struggling to say the right things to a dying person. It was not amusing, exactly, but I felt at ease. I might have counseled them, by imagining myself in Rob’s place, to spare their determined cheer. No “shot in the arm” could save him now. If it were me dying, I’d rather be a fly on the wall. Please, talk amongst yourselves. Try to recapture the meaningless drivel that once filled deliciously ordinary days. Slump into boredom. Pick nits. Complain. Let me die to the sounds of you being you.
When they came, I left. Turning at the door, I looked to Rob and he looked back. The warm smile, the thumbs-up, genuine, brilliant.
A week or so later I learned that Rob was upset, in pain, and incoherent. He had only a few days to live. My wife and I went to the hospice to visit him, but he was asleep. Kasey and her mother were keeping a vigil of his final hours. He would not awaken.
I didn’t know what to say. Kasey was firmly anchored at Rob’s side, tearful but composed. Rob snored. Rob was gone. We were no longer alone together, just alone. The ease I had felt in being with Rob evaporated. I couldn’t be there for him, and suddenly I felt I had no other reason to be there.
I sat quietly, gazing at a cork board of family photographs. One caught my eye, from his wedding. Rob was so clearly the star of the photograph. He seemed to wrap the whole family in his arms, head above the rest, lighting the Earth with his smile: parents on one side; in-laws on the other; Kasey under his wing.
I’ve often wondered what becomes of these pictures of our lives. When you smile for the camera, do you imagine what surge of fondness, what heartbreak your face might conjure in those who outlive your fate?
Rest In Peace
Rob Bromee
Oct. 17, 1968 — May 12, 2012
Rob’s feature obituary in the Portland Press Herald
NOTES: