My addition to "The Carnival of the Blogfaddah"

Lovingly hosted by Chablis, thank you Chablis for this opportunity to share some of our favorite posts by Rob.

This is my submission for my favorite of Rob's many posts. I know we are supposed to post a link to the entire entry but I am choosing to only copy and paste only a part of that post.

I hope and pray that one day Rob's son, Quinten, will get the chance to read his daddy's writings and fully understand the depth to which his father loved him. I also wonder (and hope) privately if Quinten will attend his daddy's funeral. Rob held Quinten high on a pedestal, a pedestal that only daddy's have for their children (as he should have, his son should never have had to bear the burden of his mother misgivings) and Quinten hasn't had the chance in the last few years to truly feel his daddy's love for him. Oh, how he will regret that in the years to come (due to no fault of his own).

My submission:

Posted Januaary 6, 2002:

Posted 12:22 PM by ACIDMAN MARS
I woke up at 4:00 in the morning because my son was moaning and twitching in his sleep, obviously having a nightmare. He and his friend Jack were spending the night together and we all lay in bed the night before watching "Shrek" until they fell asleep, and I conked out shortly behind them, all of us sideways in the bed. I am yet to see the end of that movie after two tries, because the three of us seem to share the same short attention span after 11:00 at night.


I watched my son. God, how I love that boy, and I almost reached out to wake him up, but I didn't. I watched him twitch and listened to his moans and noticed his heavy breathing. I wondered what sort of monsters he was battling in his sleep. He suddenly sat bolt upright in bed with his eyes open wide. I rubbed his shoulders. "Bad dream?" I asked. "No," he replied, "my ear just hurts REALLY BAD," and he grabbed his ear to show me how badly it hurt.


I went to the kitchen and fetched aspirin and a glass of water. He took his medicine and promptly fell back asleep. But I didn't. I sat on the bed and watched my son sleep.

When I read this quite a while back (before getting to know Rob on a more personal basis) it shed, for me, the layers of Rob's hard shell and showed me the true man who dwelled within. A man who loved his son truly, deeply and unconditionally. Rob may have been a straight shooter and as honest as the day is long but the pain he endured in merely trying to have a relationship with his son shone through that thick and hard demeanor. Rob was a man's man but he loved his children with all his heart and soul. I respect that quality in a man more than anything else, it reveals their moral fiber.

We love ya Rob and will miss you deeply.
Dawn