I carry inside of me the unconditional love of a lady who passed over at the time known as Easter, a time when sacrifice was made for the good of all. A brief glimpse into our relationship emerged in a Toastmaster’s meeting when I was asked to fill in for a missing speaker with an impromptu speech. The video below is unedited and unscripted. Just a few words, from my heart to yours, about a Grand Lady.
A Farewell to Robert
Click on the above to listen to Pat’s speech.
FROM A SPEECH GIVEN APRIL 1, 2011
He was seconds old when I looked into his eyes and saw a brilliant Light, coming from within. He came to me on my birthday—our birthday.
When I say “farewell” to him, some 32 years later, I am certain that that Light in his eyes will shine as bright as ever. My son will move to London.
Part of me knew that Robert was not really of this world. My wife and I discovered this when, at five years old, he dictated an original poem to his mother that read like a spiritual discourse.
But another part of me knew that it was my job to make him familiar with the things of this world. I started right away.
At one day old, I stuck a plum in his hand, told him it was a basketball, and taught him a hook shot. At two days old I stuck a chess knight in his tiny hand and taught him the Ruy Lopez opening. In high school he became the top player on the chess team.
At three years old, Mom read to him from a Pop-Up Spiderman book. In a few years he was reading at an adult level. At 23, he and I went together to the opening of the first Spiderman Movie and watched it together from the third row.
At age six, I brought him a computer. In a few years, he was teaching me programming code.
As a young teen, I showed him fishing and camping and hiking. I was his assistant scoutmaster for boy scouts. The camping and hiking hooked him. The fishing did not.
One day, he asked me to take him hunting with his BB gun. He wanted to see what it was like to kill something. I took him to an asparagus field where red-winged blackbirds flocked. He picked out his prey, fired one shot, and down went the bird with a hole in its eye. That was his first and last hunting trip. He wrote a poem about it years later.
Despite my efforts to provide him a “normal” healthy childhood, we all knew Robert’s path would be unique. In high school history class, he and his best friend, Robbie, changed the course of a World War II in a simulation with their clever, if not somewhat shady, dealings. Their small, Soviet satellite ended up taking over the world.
Robert and Robbie’s video commercial all in Spanish for high school Spanish class, was shown to other classes for years to come. They were selling Brain Rico, brains that came in can for people to improve their health and make them peppier.
By his senior year, Robert was sporting a nose ring and blue hair. The irony was, that when he went off to college at, guess where, UC Berkeley, he lost the blue hair and the ring because he thought it made him look – like everyone else.
It was during this time I thought might be saying farewell to Robert in a more permanent way. He was home for spring break and came into our bedroom buckled over in pain. We rushed him to the hospital for a “routine” appendectomy. As we sat down the hall from the operating room, one of the nurses stuck his head out the door and said (too loudly) that he was not going to make it.
Robert had gone into anaphylactic shock in reaction to the anesthesia. His lungs filled with fluid, which were drained and he was taken to intensive care to see if his mom and I could help him to stay in this world by encouraging him to breathe on his own, despite the incredible pain. We took shifts all night.
I remember going into the little special room they had for loved ones, a spiritual room. I remember a conversation I had, well, more like a request. It became acutely clear to me that I was not in any way in charge of Robert’s destiny.
I went back and took my shift in encouraging Robert to breathe on his own. My wife stayed with me. She took double shifts.
Sometime later, I shared with Robert my awareness from that. All my concerns, dreams, and expectations for him boiled down to just one request. “Please.” I said. I’d like you to keep breathing.”
He seemed to be okay with that request and I am grateful.
Several years later, he experienced his own son’s assisted breathing for just three days. A few years ago, I watched Robert cradling his son in his arms, as he left this world.
There are no words which come close to describing the Light in that hospital room as Robert’s son passed on. Only poets seem to catch some particle of experiences like these. And Robert spent the next several years becoming the poet who could capture what Wordsworth calls, “thoughts that lie to deep for tears.”
Robert continued to breathe. As the director of technology for a very successful consulting company, he did the work before him. He and his wife, Val, would come over every Wednesday night for several years, for dinner and backrubs offered by yours truly.
He completed his MFA in poetry, published, shared his poetry in many readings, loved his wife and family, and seemed to be doing quite well.
But, as I said earlier, Robert was not much for convention. He needed a challenge, and being married to a Londoner, he loved London. One day he announced at dinner that he didn’t know how, but they would be moving to the UK.
His mom and I knew him well enough to know, this was not idle fantasy. Within months he had his work visa, and within a week after that, he had a job as the chief of technology for a promising startup company in London.
And when I say “fare well” to Robert in a few weeks, at the LAX international airport, I will remember that “fare well” means “fare thee well in the world,” the world, I did my best to introduce him to. I will not be saying goodbye. In a poem to his deceased son Robert writes in the last line, “I will go on speaking to you as long as I live.”
And I, Robert, will go on speaking to you, as long as I live. There simply is no way that you can ever leave my heart. Your Light beams too brilliantly in here.
Keep breathing.
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Blood Monopoly a novel
- BLOOD MONOPOLY launches 13-year-old Simon Gray on a magical quest to avenge his father’s murder, two romances, three countries, a state prison, and three caves, including the dark cave inside his own heart in which he can find no candle of hope.
- With a few good friends and a blood promise Simon learns of his Dad’s addiction and his use of the BLOOD MONOPOLY magic that puts their family in peril. And it all begins sixty years ago when Simon’s grandfather was just three years old and received a gift in a cave in Croatia.
- First blood is drawn right here:First Blood
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Second Chances
For the second year in a row I managed to win the area B4 Toastmaster’s International Speech Contest with this story about second chances from my book A Blink in the Eye of the Great Blue Heron. Enjoy!
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A Father’s Blink
It’s just a blink. The time between my daughter’s birth and her wedding. A blink. The message of this story told at a toastmasters event is a simple one. In the time between, ENJOY THE DANCE!
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Blink Once and It’s Gone
I wonder if truly every loss of some physical thing in this world is in fact a gift, a special reminder of what is, as The Little Prince says, “essential,” the invisible stuff.
Not always easy to see it that way, I know. But in 1981 as a student in a Masters program in Spirtual Psychology, I began to learn that I could look at what appears to be taken, or I could choose to look for the blessing.
This story is about a school building burning to the ground, a story about a school being so much more than a building . Check it out and other audio stories on the LISTEN section of this website. Click on: 1981
(length of audi0 8 minutes)
Life as a Blink in the Eye of a Great Blue Heron
At twelve years old, I decided that riding my bike to the church on Sunday to find God was just not for me.
One Sunday, I lashed on my fishing pole and headed for Duck Creek instead – in the rain.
I ploughed through thick brush to the large willow tree that guarded the best spot in the creek for both the swimming and fishing.
As I crept up to the creek, now swelled to five times its normal width, I felt his eyes. Just to the other side of the willow, still as a tree himself, the Great Blue Heron stared at me.
I stared back. He was huge, magnificent, noble. My heart pounded in his presence.
Five minutes or five hours or an eternity passed. And just once, he blinked and turned his head slightly.
At that moment I felt it. The bigness. The peace beyond words. All that stuff that poets strain to capture. I found what I had been looking for those other Sundays.
And with a slow, heavy beat, the Great Blue waved farewell with a six- foot wingspan and left me in tears of gratitude.
It was much later in life that I found the words that best described this experience. Ralph Waldo Emerson said:
God enters by a private door into every individual.
I would see the Great Blue Heron again and again in my life. It seemed that whenever I needed a reminder, he would fly across my horizon or post himself in a field that I was passing by.
Everything I write about comes to me in much the same way as that bird did; as a gift, a gift which it is my honor to share.
I look forward to sharing with you and hearing from you.
With deep regard,
PATRIC PEAKE
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