Bob Tolan

A few months back my old pal Bob Tolan passed away, and his son R.J. asked me if I'd prepare a few remarks to be read at his memorial, which was held in South Carolina ( or was it North?--ah well, you seen one Carolina, you've seen em all). Anway, here's the text of what I sent him:

 

I am very pleased to have been asked to share a few of my memories of Bob Tolan, and as I told RJ, my main concern was how to whittle it down to under three hours. But Bob was an appreciator of “economy with words”, and so I will try.

Bob Tolan

We know little of people by their stats—the accretion of credits, honors, awards, and travels all tell us what they did, but not what they were. What we are is defined by our reflection upon those whom we have encountered over the years. We all know, or have some impression of what Bob accomplished in his life, but that is one version of him, an avatar. What he was as a man, a  father, a husband and a friend, is something different, different to each of us, a kind of one to one alchemy.

To me, he was an encourager. I met him a few years after I began working in Columbus theatre, and while I had been playing leading classical roles, and was making my beginnings as a director, I harbored secret doubts as to whether I belonged in that world. I wondered where I counted as an artist. From the start, Bob considered me a colleague, and routinely tried to convince me to move to New York and try my fortunes there. He kept saying that with the qualities I possessed, I would never stop working. “ Sure, “ I’d say, “as a cab driver-- New York has plenty of those, thank you.” And he would roll his eyes in that manner I’m sure all of you would recognize. But he was the first real professional theatre man I’d ever met, who had worked on levels of the theatre world, and to have him consider me in that way was a great boost to my confidence.

He directed me in a number of shows over the few years he lived in Columbus—one in particular was produced in a converted warehouse, with no A/C, in July. During one scene, I had to sit at the edge of the raised stage, and I would pour sweat onto the legs of the people sitting right below the apron. It was a miserable experience from a physical standpoint, made bearable by the kindness Bob gave me, pulling his station wagon up in the alley behind the warehouse, with his A/C blasting, and while the audience was still applauding the end of the first act, I would run through the curtain, past the other actors backstage, through the backdoor, and into his car, for 15 minutes of blessed cold air. He always had a soft drink for me as well. He did this every night of the run. He never came in the theatre. He just knew when intermission was ready to begin. After that, I would have done anything for him. I was the lion, and he was the man who’d pulled the thorn from my paw.

I will close with an unintended practical joke I played on him. I had founded a small theatre company, and in its early days, nearly all the jobs of the production were done by me, and a few others. We didn’t want it to look like a “kitchen table operation”—one of Bob’s phrases—so we made up fake company members, so it would look like we had a large group. In those days I would do the costuming myself, which was mostly just renting or borrowing from other theatres or costume houses. Since I was also directing, I made up the name “ Edith Kneck” for the costume designer, a play on Hollywood’s legendary Edith Head. In time, Edith even started to get favorable reviews in the papers. She costumed all our shows for the first season.

One day Bob called me and asked for Edith’s number. He said he’d seen one of our shows and was impressed by her design, and wanted to hire her for a show he was producing. I was stunned for a moment—for a little while there I considered seeing how long I could stretch this out—“ Edith said she’s heard about your tyrannical nature and refuses to work with such a mean guy”—but I finally just said,”Bob….I’m Edith….Edith Kneck?…you know, Edith Head…?” He was quiet for a very long moment, then shouted, “ Oh Jesus Christ!” and hung up on me. He called back a little later and called me a few choice names, then hung up again.

As a postscript, I knew Edith’s days were numbered now that she’d been outed. So by the 2^nd season, when we could afford a real costumer, I killed her off. We put a table in the lobby, draped in black, with an “in memoriam” display of her designs. I explained she been killed in a sewing machine accident. A second postscript: one of the local papers gave her a brief obit on the arts page. Bob gave me a copy of it.

John Updike once said the deaths of distant friends carry us off, bit by bit, and he’s right. I’ll never again be that alchemy of Bob/Mark, just as all of you have lost the alchemy of Bob/You. He’s taken that with him to the next place. And like alchemy, the math doesn’t add up—he was a large man, and took up a large space in our hearts, and yet the world he left behind to us is a much smaller one.

Point of Order

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Good Dog

Sonny, his last weekend 2013

Sonny smelling the flowers, 2004

I have been walking shadowless through the house these last four days. I have cried my 54 year old self to sleep every night…

I keep finding the empty places he left behind—under my desk, where, when thunder rolled up from across Alkire Lake, he would carry his toys and curl trembling at my feet…

Stretched out on the floor behind me as I cooked at the stove, where he lay in wait in the sure knowledge that something tasty would fall from the pan…

On the couch where he would kick off the throw pillows and curl up, watching to see if I needed him, till he dozed off…

The arm of my chair, where he would come to rest his chin and serenade me with the most unique melody of groans, rumbles, whines, and wheedles when he thought he wasn’t getting enough attention, which was always…

The backyard and the field beyond, where some of his toys still lay, because I haven’t the heart to throw them away yet…

At the front door as I entered, with that powerful wagging tail that swept over everything in its range, a welcome gift carried gently in that soft mouth because he was a good host ( the gift was whatever was handy—shoes, bones, teddy bears, even a live kitten once)…

At the back door, which he would swat whenever it was time to go outside, and which bears the marks of his claws…

Our bed, where in his last weeks he would gather his waning strength to jump up, and burrow in between us, his exhausted head laying heavily on my chest…

Sonny was an eternal puppy all his ten years, excited to get in on anything good we might be doing. He aspired to nothing more than to live in the land of Good Dog, where praise and snacks rained like manna, and on those occasions when he crossed into the dark frontiers of Bad Dog, he didn’t stay there long. His ears and tail would droop, and then, thanks to a short term memory equal to any goldfish, they would rise again, and that smiling face with the famous, serene  Golden Retriever eyes would tell us all was forgiven, even if we hadn’t forgiven him yet.

He was game and handsome and strong. We took him to a swimming lake once, where he made friends with all the kids along the beach, and let them hang onto his back as he tugged them through the water . He loved teasing our old terrier Pepper when they were outside, playfully nipping at her butt to get a rise out of her. He would wait by the deck for her to come running back to the house, then block her path till she eventually learned to walk back slow and indifferent, denying him the fun of impeding her progress. After Pepper died, and our new terrier came to the house, the roles became reversed—she would wait for him to run back, and he too learned to walk slowly, so as not to trigger her terrier response to swift motion.

His appetite was prodigious, and he was an incorrigible counter-surfer and while we might occasionally forget we’d left something on the kitchen counters, he never did. We kept a tally called Sonny’s Scarf List, of all the things he’d stolen and eaten—whole pies, pizzas, loaves of bread, pots of stew, and then there were the non-food items: four wristwatches with metal bands, ear buds, binder clips, plastic ground beef wrappers with metal tips—the list went on. Everything passed too, in large land mines of poop on the back field, that made him the anathema of all our neighbors who liked to stroll along the lake.

He was hell on four legs his first three years—no one told us Goldens are the slowest to mature of all dogs. We learned by trial and error—actually, error and more error, but we grew up together, and his last six years he was the dog we’d dreamed he be. A personality bigger than either of ours, an endless capacity for affection, mostly obedient, always entertaining. Beloved of all our cats, who napped with him, and groomed him, even as he’s steal their food and catnip toys. Our tabby Max, who was Sonny’s self-appointed toadie, has spent a lot of time looking out the backdoor these last few days, meowing, as he always did when Sonny went out. In Max’s world, if Sonny isn’t in the house, he’s in the backyard, though unseen now. Max always stood at the door meowing until we let Sonny back in.

A combination of a massive blood tumor the size of a cabbage on the left side of his neck, and a bad heart arrhythmia took him down.  The vet had never seen anything like it. The weight of the tumor wouldn’t let him lift his head at the end. He had no pain, but was so exhausted we knew the time had come. On the final day we had to lift him onto a Radio Flyer wagon to wheel him to the car. When we got to the vet’s office, he got out of the car on his own steam and walked unsteadily to the back examining room, wagging his tail. He was too heavy to lift onto the table, so we lay him on the floor, and got down with him, stroking him and assuring him he was forever in the land of Good Dog. The vet came in and administered a sedative, and as he drifted off, his head in Dani’s lap, I got down to his face and kept whispering what a good boy he was. His eyes opened and he draped his paw on my arm, as he’d done so often over the years, and drifted off again. The vet then injected the final drug, and then, astonishingly, he lifted his head and licked my face, and was gone. It was his last gift.

It was a gift to go with all the other gifts he’d given us over the last decade. He was not a child, he was a pet—I would never presume to compare the loss of a dog to the loss of a child—but I have grieved, and am grieving, as much as I ever have in my life. I’d like to think Dani and I gave him a good life, and what he gave in return is best measured by the empty spaces he leaves behind.