When it was time to retire
Bob approached the issue as he had every other major life event, with
detailed planning. He decided to return to
San Francisco, rented an apartment similar to w2hat he had lived
in Redwood City from an old friend and
transplanted the contents of his home from Redwood City to San Francisco.
I would see him about once/year on average
and made it to one birthday party but save for a 2 year stretch in the
Presidio when I had my
hands full with a hellion on wheels in the form of a foster son who
I couldn't take anywhere, I haven't lived in the bay area since. We talked on
the phone occasionally, he came to visit Greg,
and I in Arizona,
Healdsburg, and Eureka, and I
would drop by when in San Francisco but otherwise didn't know much about his
final years in the city. He had been no stranger to the rest of my family
when I was out of state and had flowers delivered to my Mom just an hour before
she died, so we always kidded him that his
floral gifts were the kiss of death. As
luck would have it I had a recurring temp job in San Jose from just before Bob
got sick (on my Birthday 4/11/2017) till just after he died, so I was able to
see him at least every 10 days or so and thus could provide a means for more
expedient flow of medical information, but little else in that realm. Bob's was
a case for which modern medicine had nothing to offer, a somewhat bitter irony
since 2018 is going down as the year we cured cancer but probably not his type
just yet. Thankfully Bob's support network was rich with friends both old
and new whose emotional pockets were deep and everyone around him at the end
provided such a degree of support that he wanted for nothing other than a wish
that it would be over quickly and painlessly which was the case.
I hesitate
to name names because of the ones I'll leave out. There's no doubt that his old
friend Ken Zimmerman was steadfast and did the majority of the heavy lifting
when it came to managing the last few months of Bob's life, and there was an
unsung hero who lived upstairs, a woman whose name I'll hopefully fill in that
fed Bob for those months. And, of
course, Miss Kitty, Gunter, Bob Keislar,
Bob's old friend and landlord, his nieces and nephews, and probably many others.
The rest of this page has photos from Bob's last 15 years - someone else will
have to provide the narrative.
Bob did have a camera during this era,
and I don't know if it was one of his
disposables or perhaps his early digital sony, but there are lots of pictures like these with a bit of a fisheye
distortion from the lens.
Once again if you have
anything to add to this page either from the images section of this website or
that you wish to provide send me an email.