My Cousin Bob

Sorry For My Absence . . . I needed a personal day after my trip to Chicago last week for the funeral of my cousin Bob. His passing has been kind of difficult for me because of the closeness of our ages. So after working three nights in a row, I needed to decompress.

It’s hard to describe my cousin Bob. But if you had known him for more than five minutes in your life, you felt as if you had known him forever.

Bob loved life, and life loved Bob back ferociously. Bob taught me how to ride a bike – no hands – down a hill at full speed. Bob taught his sister and brother how to hide and make snowballs in the window wells of their house and pelt passing cars; whose drivers would crane their heads this way and that, unable to see Bob huddling down in the window wells, giggling madly. Bob talked me into doing all his yard work by raking all the leaves into a pile and jumping into them from the roof of the garage when we were 7 years old. He even made me a parachute for me out of one of his mom’s new sheets. But he forgot to tell me he’d put his tricycle in the pile while I climbed up the ladder to the garage roof.

Bob was the one during the summer at the lake during our teenaged years who gunned the ancient outboard motor and jumped it off the boat's transom to sink into the depths of Flint Lake, never to be seen again by man. Bob was the one who arranged the trip to Iowa for himself and me, forgetting to tell our grandmother he’d be borrowing her car for a week. Bob was the one who peppered his conversations with “Dang It – Sucka!!!!” when he tripped over a hammer, felt the ladder shake, or was called out at second playing a modified game of softball that included every kid for four blocks on his team and bases that mysteriously moved during play.

The hands-down funniest story I heard about Bob was one his sister told. When she was learning to drive, she was terrified of hitting another car, and didn't get her license at 16 like most of us. So her father drove her to the family farm of her grandparents in Iowa where she could drive in great slow circles around the barn and learn some confidence with the vehicle. After a few hours of practice, and just as she was almost gaining her confidence back, Bob popped out from around the corner of the barn and ran screaming towards the car, arms flailing and screaming "LOOK OUT! LOOK OUT!!!" (It was a week before she could bring herself to drive again.)

Bob was the one whose record collection included James Brown, Jethro Tull, and the Isley Brothers when I was still listening to the Carpenters (we were only 10 months apart, and in the same grade level at school.) Bob was the one who picked a mudball fight with the Tucker kids next door, and sought shelter by hiding amongst his mothers new clean sheets drying on the clotheslines. Bob had the suitors for his daughters shaking in abject terror because of his reputation – his first son-in-law Rodney was so scared he literally couldn’t form the question to ask for Bob’s daughter’s hand in marriage. But Bob put him at ease by saying, “Rodney, I know why we’re here, and I know what you want to ask me; and it would be an honor to have you as a son-in-law.”

Bob was a good person; and I’m the kind of person who doesn’t give that name lightly. He was genuine salt-of-the-earth good, as in the type of person who would drop everything and come running if you needed help. Need some yard work done? Bob’s there. Need some home repair or painting done? Bob’s got that covered. Need somebody to listen to your problems? Bob’s got two ears, no waiting; and a cold beer in the fridge. Need somebody to help you move? Bob will bring the truck, and his whole family to help you get unloaded – and they’ll stay until the work was done. (That’s how we got unloaded when we moved back to my hometown after we got out of the Army. Bob and his family were there at 5:30 pm – interrupting their own dinner – and stayed until almost 11:00 pm to get it all inside in freezing March weather.)

I like to think that Bob started out mowing yards for the neighborhood old ladies and parlayed that into a lifelong career. He mowed lawns in the summer, raked leaves in the fall, shoveled snow in the winter, and started over again in the spring. When his brothers and sister got older, he farmed the work out to them and started a family cottage industry. When the Presbyterian Church moved to their new building in 1973 and needed a custodian, Bob did the work for free for a year until the Elders decided they’d better hire him before he got away. Bob then added light carpentry to his job skills and painting when my Dad needed a helper, and a Jack-of-All-Trades was born.

Bob’s generosity was even more limitless than his occasional fits of insanity. Bob would clean out the gutters of the house he painted for little old ladies. No extra charge; and he barely charged enough to cover the cost of paint, if that. When the elders at his church were at an impasse how to appropriate money and which contractor to choose for some repair and paint work for the Sanctuary, Bob snuck in one afternoon and did the work himself - no charge - and refused to admit he’d done it. The next year he built a stage riser for the sanctuary band and carpeted it at his own cost without being asked. When Bob visited his sister down south and saw she had a hole in her wall, he went out after everyone was asleep and bought the materials and had the repair fixed, spackled, and painted by morning.

I mentioned at Bob’s eulogy that the greatest measure of the man is that his funeral and wake were not sad, depressing things, but joyful reunions with Bob’s memory. While his wife and daughters had a few sniffles and the occasional tear or two, it’s impossible to put two or more people who knew my cousin in the same room and not have half-a-dozen stories about Bob pop up, to much laughter and smiles. The mood in the wake Friday night was laughter, smiles, and rejoicing. There were no tears of sadness there; just tears of joy at how Bob made our lives so enjoyable.

My supervisor gave me one of the greatest compliments of my life after I got back from the funeral. She said that I didn’t just do my own work well; I volunteered to help others until the work was done and didn’t think twice about it. It was a sad moment for me, but that’s just the way Bob and I were raised. The work’s not done until everyone’s work is done. My work is your work. I’m done when you’re done, and not until. It’s a little something of him I’ll take with me always.

~~JD~~