R.I.P. BOB

Today, Bob would have been 58 years old. I really wish he knew how much Matt and I miss him.
I took a small potted rose bush to place by his head stone and I had this cold chill run throgh my entire body when I read what was written or should I say not written on his grave marker.

BERNARD J PICK

(his name in Hebrew)

1948- 2005

You are in our thoughts.


That was it. Cold so cold. Bob deserved so much more than that. No mention that he was a beloved son, a beloved father, a beloved brother, or the best friend you would ever have. A kind man, the kind of man that would and did, give you the shirt off his back. A man who lived to make his children happy. And even when he was torchered by all his demons, that part of him remained consistent. It was the reason I fell in love with him and remained loyal to him even when our own relationship shattered under the chaos of his disease.

When Bob died so suddenly all the arrangements were made by his family. First of all I was in too much shock to be of any use, as he died practically in my arms, and second, I am not Jewish so I could not be involved in any of the details.
This can't possibly be all he meant to his family, it must be an oversight on someone's part, at least I hope so. They no longer speak to me because when he passed away so suddenly, our divorce was not final and his executor and I are in the middle of settling it. In my mind and by California Law if you have a long term Marriage, with no prenuptuals, the other party gets half. But not in this family. My step daughter would rather give money to attorney's than give me what is legally mine. But enough of that for today.

It makes me wonder if once Bob was gone how the real feelings of his death affected certain people. I got to the cemetery around 1:30. I thought I would go late enough so that if his daughter wanted to visit he father's grave site we would not run into each other. No one had been there or to his father's grave either. I brought them both flowers and sat and had a nice "talk" with them. How is it that once you are gone that's just the end of it. GONE No visits no flowers no sadness just nothing. It wouldn't have been so obvious to me if there were some sentimental statement carved into the marble for all the world to witness how loved and missed he was. But there was nothing, not even a date that he was born or died. The Basics.

Is that all he deserved? I think not. His every breath was consumed with love for his children. Even when that love was not returned his love never faltered. Even when his heart was broken by deeds of his daughter. He always forgave her. Like a puppy dog just wanting to be loved by an abusive master. That's how he was.

At least he was loved and appreciated by others and I hope that he took that love with him. I hope that he is resting in peace finally. I hope he found the peace that eluded him so much of his life. I pray he is looking down at his son and myself and he knows that our world has come to an unbearable black hole that we will try to get over. But everyday the phone does not ring with him calling to wake me up, or just to see how I am, is like an eternity.

Unless you have lost your soul mate, none of this will make any sense to you. He was my soul mate. I was the one in his life that forgave him everything, always. Right up till the end. I would never abandon him. Divorce could not separate us, nothing could. The silence is earth shattering without the sound of his voice calling me "STEPH". He must have called my name a billion times over 25 years that we were together. I used to cringe when he called, our son and I would make jokes about how many times he called my name, wanting me to do something for him. Now I would give anything just to hear my name called out by him just one more time. The silence is deafening and I can't hear anything but my own heart yearning to have him back in our world. To make it work this time. We were so close to regaining our lives and then within a second it was ripped away and I am left picking up the pieces of our broken life. Trying to figure out why. I loved this man so deeply so totally, that I tried everything I knew to help him get "better". In the end tough love was not the answer. I was replaced with another enabler. someone who would see it like he did because they shared the same problems.
But I was not an enabler and he would come to me and ask for advice on how to handle the situations that he found himself in. At least he came to know that it wasn't easy to watch someone hurt themselves. He knew that the only way to help someone was not to enable them. He got it finally, and we were going to try and build a life again based on that foundation.
It worked once before, I believe it could have worked again, but now it's all speculation.

If you are up there watching me today Bob, I know you feel how much I love you and I miss you. Rest in Peace my love.

Deceptive

How could such an incredibility smart, well educated, handsome man be so torchered in his life that he no longer found a reason for living. This was the journey we were about to embark on. He just simply could not stop drinking. In the beginning I didn't believe that. I really thought it was mind over matter. It wasn't. It was a very misunderstood disease. I spent all my free time trying to find out what was going on. Why was his life reeling out of control. A divorce could not have been the entire reason, especially since he was not happy being married.

He decided that maybe a change of scenery would help him to feel better. We started out on a "Road Trip" to see his best friend up in Northern California. They had grown up together from the high school days. They both went to the same boarding school and were like brothers. He thought seeing his friend would do him good. So off we went to Northern California.

His friend was actually teaching at their old school and also living there. It was weird for me to go to this old mansion which was now his friends apartment also. He had an apartment type situation on the top floor of this old former mansion which was and had been a part of this Prep School that they went to.

The first night there Bob got really drunk "surprise, surprise" and opened the windows on the top floor and crawled out on the ledge and started walking around out there. He was three stories up high and I was freaking out. I begged him to come back inside. It was the first time I realized he indeed was a man with a death wish. An adrenaline junkie or whatever. I would come to accept in time that he had no fear of dying and at times actually seemed to get pleasure from putting himself in harms way.
The only problem was he couldn't find the courage to do it, so he flirted with danger with an attitude of "Whatever". There was no fear ever.

journey into my world: Change

journey into my world: Change

Change

We drove home from Palm Springs without saying a word to one another. When I got back to his house I promptly packed up my belongings and went to a friends house. I had just recently agreed to move in with him. I couldn't bear to admit to my other friend that I just moved out from, what had happened in Palm Springs, so I went to a new mutual friend's house. A woman who went out to the clubs as much as we did. I liked her and she agreed to let me stay there. She warned me that any man who hits a woman more than likely has done it before in her experience. I wanted to give him the benefit of a doubt that it would never happen again course not knowing anything of his past I had no reason to not believe it was an isolated incident that it would never happen again. After about five days I moved back into his rented house with him. Everything quieted down after that and it was getting closer and closer to the holidays he was on his best behavior for a while. For some reason it was easier for him to not drink so much around the holidays for some reason. We got a Chistmas Tree and it was the first tree his daughter had ever had, I also baked cookies and stuff with her. We ended up having a really nice Xmas. His family didn't celebrate it so we were all excited, I wanted him and his daughter to have the best Xmas experience ever. We did.
The new year brought an entirely different reaction. Time to get really, really drunk again. He started hanging out with small time "MOB" guys and a really seedy bar in Hollywood. I was getting really uncomforable around these people. I had spent my adult years trying to not hang out with people like he was totally attracted to. I was less than happy. I was spending much less time going out at night with him and his "Boys".

I come from an Italian family in the Midwest with a lot of "Mob" activity surrounding it. I had an uncle that was shot and killed right on the front door steps of his house. Several years later his son went to Vegas, because he discovered who shot his father. He never came back. The story was he had a "Heart Attack" in Vegas. That's how it was in my family. No one ever told the truth about the goings on. My real father and mother is another great "Story" I was raised by an aunt and uncle and when I was around ten years old, my grandmother told me that the man who I thought was my uncle, was really my father. My aunt went to bed with one of her "headaches" after that for a week. They never discussed it, but instead they told me she abandoned me.
After my son was born, I hired a private detective to track her down. I located the divorce papers from California. They were never signed!!!! That was very informative seeing as though my real father had remarried and had three more children. He was either a bygamist or a killer. I had my suspicions it was the latter when there was not one soul in the entire family that would discuss the matter with me or my brother.
One of my older relatives, literally on his death bed, would not tell my brother anything. After my real father died, his wife did send a letter from my real mom that my father had kept all those years. In the letter she was telling him how she would have never gone to California ahead of him had she known that he would not follow her there with me. He lied to her and basically abducted me. These days it's kidnapping. In a mob family they all keep their mouths shut and let what happened to me go unspoken, ever. I was just given away to an aunt and uncle who wanted a little girl. No adoption papers or anything. The State had no clue.

My "Aunt" was always paranoid that my real Mom would come and get me, or at least that's what I used to think. She was so overprotective it was ridiculous. My real Mom was a dancer. They used to say she was a "Rocket" by who knows. I do know she really was a dancer because I was forbidden to ever take dance classed. Guess my Aunt didn't want me to turn out like my real Mom. I did anyway.

I was never like the rest of the family ever. As far back as I can remember, my head would tell me that I was never going to live like they did. I'm also quite a great dancer. It was one of the things I loved about hanging with Bob, in the beginning we went dancing every night but the weekends when we had his daughter.

Well enought Back Story on my childhood, but I have a real thing about low life Mob Guys.

Bob was so smitten by the company of this one guy from New York who had been a semi professional boxer. They started going out to the bars almost everynight. Of course the harder they drank the more "bar fights" started happening. One night they both got so drunk that they picked a fight with an Arab Shiek at the club. Well what they didn't expect were the shieks' body guards carring around a sap with him. So before they both knew what happened they were both on the concrete in the parking lot. They both had moderate injuries that had to be looked at by a doctor.
Bob was thrown out of the club after that. He was becoming more of a problem than was worth to them. They didn't want to alienate the Shiek with all his money so Bob, was out.

All that meant was that the seedy little bar known as "The Bottom Line" became the bar of choice for the boys. I was watching Bob's drinking start to take precidence over everything. His partner confronted his about his drinking and wanted to end the partnership after Bob went to court still drunk one morning. He was up all night and just borrowed my car to go to court just to turn in a postponement. I can only imagine how his client felt when he saw him in that condition. That was the last time he ever tried to get it together enough to go to work. It was going to be just a matter of time before bad went to worse. A few times I even called his brother and asked him if I could stay at his place in Westwood for the night, Bob's temper was scary, and I did not ever want to be there for another physical fight. After a few times of doing this I realized I no longer wanted to call his brother, I just started calling my friends when I needed to get away from Bob. It just felt better to not involve his family any longer. Bob didn't have any contact with them during this period so it was better to not involve them.

After Bob's divorce he gave his Mercedes back to his wife. I followed him to her house and watched him drop it off. He got into my car and we drove off. Now he no longer had a car. His family gave him his Mom beautiful Jaguar which he loved. That only lasted for a few months. One night I got a call that he was in a car wreck. He was driving drunk in Beverly Hills someplace and to the best of my recollection, I think he ran a curb and hit a tree. The car was totalled.

With no car, no job there wasn't much left to keep him from drinking full time. His friends would come and pick him up so transportation wasn't an issue.
He would wake up so sick in the morning but by the time I got back from work in the evening he was already "better" and the drinking would begin again. But a few months went by and now it was taking days to get better. He was really drinking himself sick.
The worst was yet to come.