… goodbye Poppy

I met Bob Iseminger 25 years ago. I really would like to be able to tell you all about that first meeting but to be honest, I don’t remember a whole lot about it.  Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t, memorable. I don’t know because my mind has this fun little habit of completely shutting down in situations marked by stress.

Oh, from reports of those around me, my faculties seems to work fine in the moment, but then my mind wipes clean any images, thoughts or memories of the situation, thereby providing me the opportunity to ruminate  about the situation, and my reaction to it, for the rest of my God-given life.

What I can tell you about that first meeting is – my nerves were in an uproar because I knew in my heart that someday, this man would be my father-in-law.

Bob and Dan’s mom, Bonnie were passing through town and stopped to take Dan to lunch, and also, to meet the girl Dan was dating.

That girl was me, in case you aren’t catching on…

After Dan and his parents left for lunch our co-workers looked to me for my reaction. I looked back at them and with a raise of my eyebrows and a slight of my head, silently asked them how I did. Hysteria erupted as one co-worker tried to explain the color of my face during the encounter.

You see, another quirky little thing about me and stress is: I can hide the amnesia part, I cannot, however, hide the blushing. Pasty-white skin, close-to-the-surface blood vessels and hyper-self-awareness are a delightful combination that results in a response that can best be described as glowing.

And not in the you’re-so-happy-you’re-glowing sense but in the geezus-I’ve-never-seen-skin-get-that-color sense. And the good times don’t just end with the blushing. Instead, I keep it going by worrying about the blushing, which in turn exacerbates the blushing, which makes me worry more about the blushing which increases the… well… you get the idea. It can actually get pretty painful.

Less than two years after that meeting Bob became my father-in-law and about a year after that, I was able to shed the radioactive sheen when talking to him. Oh what I wouldn’t give to be an olive-skinned beauty…..

Back to my father-in-law… it was early on that Dan made the comparison of his father to Spock, the vulcan character of Star Trek fame. Dan insisted his father was driven solely by logic and analysis, I insisted he was wrong. The irony is, Dan drew an exact parallel between two men with complex personalities by citing only a surface commonality. Spock was notoriously emotional because he was half-human, Bob was wonderfully emotional because he was all human, both men were uncomfortable with it.

I remember, years ago, asking my father-in-law about his shirt pocket.  My dad will only wear t-shirts with a pocket due to years of smoking… gotta keep them cigs close by (incidentally, he quit years ago, but can’t seem to shake the mystique of a pocket tee).  Dan’s dad also smoked but his chest pocket was found on a button-up shirt and was filled with more than cigarettes.

“Why do you always have pens and pencils and slips of paper in your shirt pocket?”

He looked at me like I asked, “why do you breathe” then said in a mildly condescending tone, “In case I need to draw a quick diagram.”

Who the hell walks around expecting to draw ‘a quick diagram’? Bob Iseminger, that’s who.  Once an engineer, always an engineer. I think Dan said he was 7 when his father decided it was time he know how a refrigerator works, complete with diagrams and equations.

I swear Bob broke his collar bone while playing with Cal one Saturday.  I forget what they were doing, but I was outside with them when he somehow ran headlong into a waist-high brick wall on our patio. He was in obvious pain, sweating, labored breathing.  I said, “Let me take you to the hospital.”

He said, “Give me a minute to make an assessment.”

Give.me.a.minute.to.make.an.assessment.

Who fuckin says that???

In my panic, I repeated my desire to get him to the hospital – a number of times.  Each time he responded calmly with, “I just need a minute to make an assessment.” Uhm… I already made an assessment and you need to go to the damn hospital.

He never did go and I don’t remember how his injury played out (remember… I have stress-induced amnesia…) but we have laughed for years over his request for a little time to make an assessment.

I once watched that man spend a full 2 minutes fiddling with a “tester piece” of chicken on his grill.  Now what I haven’t mentioned is – Dan’s mom is very prim and proper. No shit, the woman sews lace on the collars of her sweatshirts.  So when I could no longer remain silent during the tester-piece madness and blurted out, “What the fuck are you doing with that nub of chicken?” He was caught a little off guard.

He gathered himself, chuckled then explained that one must have a tester-piece to more effectively monitor the grilling process. I’m pretty sure those were his exact words…

As an aside, his son does not follow in his footsteps and consequently cooks the dick out of everything he grills… I guess there’s something to be said for analyzing everything to death.

I enjoyed conversing with my father-in-law, although for the most part, I was usually in over my head.  I think I can safely say he, too, enjoyed most of our discourse. The only time I could really hold my own with him was in the sports realm, though.  One afternoon he and I sat watching a football game, I was complaining about the moronic play-calling and said, “I’m just an average 39-year old woman and I know it’s stupid… how can THEY not know???”

Bob smiled that smile of his and said, “You are anything but an average woman, Karen.  Don’t sell yourself short.”

The highest compliment I’ve ever received.

Dan and I are terrible with the kids’ school pictures.  We fill out the order form, send in a check then promptly toss the finished product in a box without disseminating a single picture. Dan decided he wanted to make a photo album for his parents last Christmas so I sat down and organized pictures from school and sports and filled an album.

Dan’s mom unwrapped it, looked at a couple of pages then got caught up in the chaos of 7 people opening Christmas presents… it is a touch overwhelming.  A few minutes later I asked, “Where’s dad?” He came from around the corner with the album in his hand, “I was looking through the kids’ pictures,” he said, without releasing his grip.  I think it was about a half hour later when I looked over at him and saw him going through the pages again… logic my ass…

It was terribly easy for me to see this man in his entirety.  Not so much for Dan.  In the same vein, I have a completely different view of my own mom than Dan has.  You see… we got the luxury of knowing our in-laws after they’d completed their childrearing obligation.  My mom was a different person to Dan, as Bob was a different person to me.

Sadly, we lost our Spock this weekend.  An aneurysm near his brain stem took him from us, unexpectedly.  It was a different circumstance than watching my mom suffer for 103 days before passing away with a brain tumor… and while I can’t say one is worse than the other, I can say without hesitation, both are devastating.  It’s horrifically ironic that the two most brilliant people I’ve ever known were foiled by their brains. Unfathomable.

We had to look through some of Bob’s papers this weekend and it was in these notes that Dan found some closure, some proof of just how much his dad loved him and his family. It was a seemingly subconscious, nonchalant ode to our family but it was hugely cathartic for a son who spent his life trying to make his dad proud.

I wish Bob had been more openly expressive of his love but I can rest easy knowing there was tremendous love and I think, now… Dan can, too.

Keep playing your music, Poppy. I sure will miss your all-consuming hugs….

Bob’s obituary

Bob’s passions… his kids, grandkids and music all in a single video