Remembering Bob

At some point, some person will become a part of your life for a short time, but will leave a very lasting impression on your heart.  This is an experience that most everyone will have, and it can be a unique experience, to be so affected by someone you've barely gotten to know.

This is the story of the brief time that Bob* was a part of my life.

From October 2006 to October 2007, I worked in the administration and monitoring positions at a residential facility here in Pensacola where newly-released inmates were court ordered to attend drug and alcohol abuse treatment.  Up to 60 of these clients at a time lived in our facility, taking part in individual and group counseling and working to get back into the job force.  Each week, some clients would rotate out and others would rotate in.  Though I spent 50+ hours a week working among them, I never truly got to know the majority of the clients as there was a need to maintain a clear separation between profession and personal life.

But, try as I might, I did still get to know occasional clients very well—nothing remotely inappropriate, but some of these people.....you just couldn't help but like them.  Yes, I knew many of the more troubling and disturbing details of their individual pasts, but I also knew that many of these people were struggling with addictions that had taken away their self-control along with their self-respect.  The majority of the clients were good people who had made very bad choices and ended up in very bad situations.  Then they had landed in our facility.

Bob was one such client.  He was in his early 40s when he came to the facility in March of 2007, but hard living made him look at least 10 years older.  Right off the bat, some of the more troublesome clients began to give him a hard time, having somehow found out—perhaps he had told them himself—that it was his second stint at the facility and that his first round, obviously, had been somewhat less than successful, landing him back with us for another try.  But with each tease, Bob would very quietly growl to the aggressor to "shut the hell up" and then go on about whatever he had been doing already.

Bob was quiet, most of the time.  But occasionally, when I was in the front office by myself, he would come to the window and say hello.  Few people ever noticed Bob's sparkling blue eyes or took the time to talk to him or to discover that, in his sobriety, Bob had a gift for wit and humor.  Over time, I discovered that I had come to enjoy having Bob around, and I looked forward to seeing him at work each day.

As I got to know him, I noticed that Bob didn't talk much about his past outside of counseling meetings.  I knew that he had a mother in Jacksonville, that he owned a mobile home but had no way to safeguard it from being stolen or destroyed, and that he had a daughter, someplace, who was roughly my age and who refused to talk to him (he never told me why).  I learned that he was a gentleman and had impeccable manners and a strong sense of honor and loyalty.  He kept to  himself and avoided the "drama" that would get stirred up among people living in close quarters for extended periods.  He simply went about, doing what he needed to do, and ignored the troubles around him.

By mid-June, about 10 weeks after Bob arrived, we began to see that something was wrong.  He always looked as if he was in pain, but would deny it of we asked and would take care to conceal the emotions in his face.  There was nothing we could do, once all our offers for help had been refused.

When he reached the appropriate stage in his treatment, Bob had to find employment.  He got hired to a construction crew working with several other men from the facility, and he actually looked excited for the first time since his arrival.  He said it felt good to know he'd be earning "honest money" again.  On his first day of work, I felt like a mother putting her child onto the bus for his first day of Kindergarten as I watched Bob climb into the crew truck and head off to build something.  But only 2 hours later, Bob was back at the facility, looking dejected and beaten.  He told me that the "boss man" had told him that he couldn't wear sneakers on a construction site and not to come back to work until he had a "safer" pair of work boots.  Bob had no money for work boots, and no family to help him buy any.

That afternoon, I had one of the men sneak into the dorms and check Bob's shoes for a size tag.  Then I went that night and bought Bob a brand new pair of work boots.  When he awoke the next morning, I was already back at work, waiting by the coffee maker to surprise him with the shoes.  When he saw what I had done, he smiled.  It was the first time in nearly 3 months that I had seen him smile.  He thanked me and ran out the door, boots in hand, to chase down the company work truck that was about to leave the parking lot without him.  He came back to the facility that afternoon, triumphant as any king after a victory on the battle field.  He had worked a full day and earned honest money for the first time in 15 years.

I was so happy for him.

But over the next couple of weeks, the pained looks in his face returned.  And his appetite dwindled to nearly nothing.  I knew there was something wrong, but he still denied it.  Every afternoon as I arrived for my regular shift, he would be waiting to see if I had any work that needed to be done around the facility.  He'd fix a broken shelf or hang new posters on the walls.  he cleaned the staff bathrooms and mopped the floors in the common rooms.  He was reliable.  He was friendly.  He was, perhaps, the most genuine person I have ever known.  He would tell me about his daughter's childhood, and how he missed her, and how I reminded him of her.

And although I fought it for months, I couldn't help but come to care for Bob.  I cared for him in the way you might care for a child entrusted to your care.  I was happy with him when good things happened.  I was willing to lend an ear when he'd had a bad day.  Had we known each other under different circumstances, we might have become friends.  As it was, we could not be.

After watching Bob eat less and less for a couple of weeks, I finally convinced him that he needed to see a doctor.  I got permission for him to leave the facility, and drove him to the E.R. myself one night at the end of my shift.  After seeing him to the check-in desk, I left him there so that I could go home to sleep.

Upon arriving at work the next afternoon, I went in search of Bob to find out if there had been any diagnosis of the problem.  But he wasn't there.  Some of my co-workers told me that Bob had been admitted to the hospital from the E.R., but they didn't know what the problem was.  Worried, I began making phone calls.  Eventually, I was transfered to a nursing station near his room, only to be told that they couldn't give me any information.  I called back again and got the switchboard to transfer my call straight into his room.  I asked him if he had any news.  He answered that he was waiting for some test results, and for the first time—after months of always wanting to do things FOR me—he asked a favor OF me.  He had some cash, he said, in his locker in the facility's dorms that he was afraid would be stolen.  It was the first honest money he'd ever earned, and he wanted it, along with the novel he was reading, his toothbrush, and his work boots.

I thought it was an interesting list of items, but I didn't question him.  I told him I would drop them off to him on my way home that night.

When I arrived to his room at the hospital, the doctors (4 of them) were just leaving.  I went in, and Bob told me that they had, indeed, found the source of his pain.  He had been discovered to have pancreatic cancer, in a very advanced stage, and the prognosis was less than bleak.  A judge had already released him from his obligation to complete the treatment program.  His estranged mother was coming to get him, to take him back to Jacksonville for however long he would live.  I pushed back the tears, not willing to admit that this person I cared for was dying in front of me and there was nothing I could do about it.

I held his hand for a few minutes, and he told me about the room he would have at his mother's house.  As I got up to leave, Bob smiled at me mischievously and said "Marry me, Ms. Getz!" (He never even knew my first name.)  I laughed, trying to stay upbeat.  I kissed him on the forehead, and left.

About a month later, I got a small piece of mail delivered to my work address.  It was a thank you card from Bob's mother.  She informed me that he had only lived for 3 weeks after his cancer diagnosis.  It had been far too advanced to attempt any sort of treatment, and the doctors in Jacksonville had simply made him "comfortable."  She thanked me for being kind to him, saying that I was the person he talked about most often.  And she told me that before he died, he had insisted on being buried in the work boots I had bought him.

Five years ago today, July 20th, 2007, Bob passed away.  He dies without ever knowing that he had touched my heart.  Through what must have been immense pain, Bob's focus was always helping someone else and working toward a recovery that he never was able to achieve before the cancer claimed his life.  He was a good man, and I don't think he ever knew that.  And somewhere in Jacksonville, FL, Bob is laid to rest in a nice new suit and a pair of work boots bought on sale at Walmart in the middle of the night.

Thank you, Bob, for being a part of my world for that time.  You truly were a good man, and I miss you.

*Bob was the man's real name, but he last name is left out for privacy reasons.