by Robin Goldfin
(1957-2024)
In 2003 my father got his passport renewed because he was going to come visit me in Italy. He asked his first cousin Bobby to go with him.
“Where will we stay?” she asked. “We’ll stay with Robin.”
“Have you asked him about this?” “Sure.”
“And it’s ok with him?”
“Sure!”
In fact, my father and I had discussed him coming to visit while I was teaching in Italy. And we had gone over the subject of his lodgings, and I had told him NO WAY is he staying with me. I love him, I’d be happy to spend time with him and show him around, but he is a grown man with a bank account and he can well afford a nice hotel.
I don’t care if you loved and clothed and fed and supported me for 18 plus years. [You can’t stay with me…]
As it turned out, my father didn’t visit and it’s probably a good thing. In May of that year, as I was hiking with my friend Alan on the Amalfi coast, I got a call from my sister. They found my father lying on the kitchen floor, having had a stroke. He was conscious but after they hospitalized him, his condition worsened, and they had to intubate him and induce a coma. He never woke up.
I remember him driving us to baseball games when I was young. He liked the game; I liked the hot dogs. I remember him getting a new station wagon every few years—the old Fords with the wood paneling on the side. Him packing his station wagons with suitcases to go on the road. Him coming home and unpacking.
Years later, when I became a writer, he would ask:
“What are you writing about, Rob? Why don’t you write a play about me?”
—My dream: I have traveled back in time and entered a room. My father is there with his mother. He looks like he did in the 1960s: thick, black framed glasses, pork-chop sideburns, he’s happy to see me, he welcomes me. He knows I’ve come to visit. Or is it he who has come to visit me. The dead come to visit in our dreams. G&S
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