From: anderson@macc.wisc.edu (Jess Anderson)
Newsgroups: soc.motss
Subject: I Shall Miss Him
Date: 14 Aug 92 01:21:09 GMT
Organization: Madison Academic Computing Center, UW-Madison


             In Memoriam Rob Bernardo
         March 9, 1952 -- August 13, 1992

Rob Bernardo was my friend.  I suppose it's common to
underrate that simple statement, just as we sometimes
underrate the person to whom it applies, taking it for
granted that what we value will always be there whenever we
want access to it, to the person who embodies it for us.  As
we probably all know, and as recent events show, these days
we get far too many rude shocks, as fate and the plague
break our hearts yet again.

Of my many important friendships forged in the domain of
email and tempered by the later privilege of face-to-face
exchanges, that with Rob was by far the most extended and
developed.  It was so comfortable, so usual and dependable --
I'm sure for us both -- that how it came to pass is now more
or less lost in the shifting sands of time.  I had been
posting to soc.motss (then net.motss) for only a few weeks
when one of us wrote to the other to discuss some point or
issue, and thus began an ongoing exchange that would soon
reach heroic proportions.  We would write huge, 200-300-line
letters, sometimes two or three times a day, day in and day
out.  I can't imagine how we ever found the time for this,
and after a couple years we both kind of scaled it back a
bit.  But the massive archive of our correspondence contains
letters for most of the days, going back to late 1986.  In
fact, it turns out to be 5,322 letters over the course of
5.6 years, amounting to 14.9 MB.

I can't think of a subject of any importance to either of us
that we didn't treat extensively somewhere along the line.
We poured out everything, the histories of our lovers,
disappointments, triumphs, favorite foods, pet hates, fellow
motssisti good and bad, current fascinations, foods,
hobbies, passions, tricks, far-flung speculations, political
aspirations and conflicts, and so on, all of it tempered by
a goodly share of joking at one another's expense, tartly
bitchy remarks about ourselves and others, ridiculousness of
every stamp, all of it some part of the glue that cements
the variegated mosaic of a loving friendship into a single
harmonious creation.

We had good fights, too, though we were always very careful
not to go too far, or at least to yowl "Foul!" when one of
us did go too far.  Only one topic was *absolutely* taboo,
and this is my first and only reference to it: Rob was 5'4"
tall, and the word "short" never passed my lips, because he
was extremely sensitive about his height; references to
"short people" made him instantly see red.  He was allowed
to make jokes about my excess of growth hormones (not that
I'm so very tall, 6'2"), but the converse was strictly
off-limits.

In April of 1988, we finally met.  My birthday is in May,
and so is the birthday of Oriana Spadix, Rob's horse.  In
his characteristic fashion, to mark the birthdays and my
arrival and also to inaugurate his then newly remodelled
kitchen (Herculean labor *that* was!), he gave one of those
great parties that made him the Perle Mesta of Concord (for
the younger folks out there: Mesta was a founding member of
the Jet Set when glittering people were still getting around
in piston aircraft; she was noted mainly for great society
parties involving Everyone who was Anyone).  Rob arranged
for a substantial fraction of ba.everyone.anyone to be on
hand at this party -- 40 people, maybe -- and as usual, the
food and the company were plentiful and delicious (uh, er,
hm).  It was such fun, and we got along perfectly.  Although
we were close physically, neither of us was attracted to the
other erotically, so we never had a sexual relationship,
which in some way probably made it easier for us both to
feel secure when we said "I love you."

As it turned out, AIDS was a reality in our lives from the
day we met, because no sooner had I arrived at Rob's than I
got a phone call from Madison telling me that one of my
greatest great loves had died in New York.  The party the
next day did a lot to lift my defeated spirits.  Eight weeks
later I was back in California for the first motss.con,
again staying with Rob.  I picked up a Bay Area Reporter on
my way out of the first night's con event at the Eagle, and
the next morning saw the obit of another old boyfriend from
Madison.

But the con was a great boost.  Rob's computer connection
back then was a terminal and slow modem to PacBell, where he
worked, and I rushed to make the first posting from the con
to the nation and the world (I think I beat out Steve Dyer
by mere minutes).  One thing the con did for both Rob and me
was to provide us a common base of about 80 friends and
acquaintances to alternately dish or sigh about.  Sadly,
three of them -- Doug Mosher, Seth Miller, and Mark Nilson --
have since gone the way of so many, and like Rob himself,
others will all too likely follow eventually.

What that time represents now is a deep pool of mostly
pleasant memories.  I have to say -- I mean, *I* need to say
it -- that unlike the recent death of my mother, which I
received as a kind of timely transformation, somehow fitting
and fair for her 83 years, Rob's death at 40 seems terribly
unfair, untimely, and unfitting, and it fills me with a
sadness and regret beyond describing.

It hardly seemed to us possible this past January that it
had been nearly four years since we'd seen each other in the
flesh.  Somewhat by hook and by crook, I'd managed to get the
boss to pay for airfare and conference fees so I could
attend the NeXTworld Expo at San Francisco's Civic Center.
When the expo itself ended, I took BART out to Concord and
spent a delightful few days visiting with Rob.

So much had happened to both of us between this visit and
the earlier one.  I had a new job and various associated
challenges.  Rob had found a new job, then been laid off; he
had spent many months trying to find another one suitable
for his interests and background.  He had taken the test and
found out he was HIV+, and understandably the HIV infection
became a central focus of his life, the more so as his cell
counts dropped and he started having increasing numbers of
listless, low-energy days.  But the periods of feeling
pretty well lasted a fair while.  We had talked of doing a
camping trip together, though nothing every came of it.
We'd also talked of his visiting Wisconsin, for he'd never
been to the Midwest.  This was all set to happen July 20th,
but the week before he started getting sick with what would
prove to be the final illness.

As Arnold mentioned in a posting not long ago, the major
recent project was a highly developed and technically
complex landscape garden design, full of all sorts of Rob's
favorite kind of fun: solving problems.  In a way no one
could have foreseen entirely, this landscaping seems to me a
metaphor for Rob himself.  I've often wondered if my friend
ever made a wholly unpremeditated move in his life.  For he
always seemed to me to reflect in advance of every step.
Certainly he did when speaking, his remarks coming in short
bursts punctuated by many "um"s and considerable silences.
We wrote back and forth endlessly about the landscape,
considering what would go here, what would go there, myriad
detail upon myriad detail.  Mind you, this all started five
years ago and only recently started to become a reality.
Yet once a decision was reached, he would move with
conviction and outward assurance.  And he totally loved
doing the work.  He sent me photos of the garden not long
ago, and when it matures -- will it, I wonder? -- it should
be quite splendid.

Now that things have turned out as they have, so
bewilderingly final and unfair, I expect I'll think of this
last project as a kind of cherry-blossom symbol of Rob.  You
know, in Japan, when the cherries are in bloom, you see lots
of old guys sitting under the flower-filled trees,
apparently sunk in reveries about the ancient traditions.
The cherry blossom is a symbol of the samurai, because
unlike so many flowers, it does not wilt on the plant;
rather, it reaches the peak of its bloom and drops off in
full flower to die.  So here was a growing, vibrant person,
reaching his peak, then like the samurai, dropping
unexpectedly in full bloom.  What else could it be except
unbearable?

I expect to see him again.  For two months now, including
last night, I've been seeing my mother in my dreams, so I
know that whatever dreams are, she's in there, quite alive.
I'm sure it will be the same with Rob, whose intense deep
blue eyes, slightly worried look, and ebullient outbursts of
laughter will probably delight me the rest of my days, if
only in my memory or in my dreams.  

On my office bulletin board I have a snapshot of the view
from Rob's back porch, looking up at Mt.  Diablo; it matches
the complementary panorama of another photo, from the top of
the mountain looking back down toward the house.  To me,
these pictures symbolize much that is California and much
that was Rob Bernardo, known to many, loved by many, and
forever to be lovingly remembered by me -- rest in peace,
dear friend -- as rob@mtdiablo.concord.ca.us.
-- 
Jess Anderson <> Madison Academic Computing Center <> University of Wisconsin
Internet: anderson@macc.wisc.edu <-best, UUCP:{}!uwvax!macc.wisc.edu!anderson
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Newsgroups: soc.motss