Many of us are Rob Rener adjacent. Never having had the privilege of meeting this lovely human man and his circle, but knowing someone who does, or did, and has or had been moved by the encounter.
I have a friend who was set up on date with him by another of the dearest of our friends. That one, the dearest of dearests, is gone now. Dead and sad to be so. She and I, the dearest of dearests, were mothers together. Adoptive parents. She, single and me in partnership with a real mensch who did his best to love me and us and really believed in it all. He’s gone now , too. I was lucky and if I admit it, I am still bereft.
But lucky in friendship with Bobbie, as well. She adopted a child at birth a few months before I did. I met the birth mom and spent the afternoon with the birth moms other child in a park by the La Brea Tar Pits while the new baby was being born. I knew nothing about children. I expected the small girl to be happy sitting in a park and doing nothing. I provided no swing, no slide, no ice cream treat. I thought she should be happy doing nothing and happily listening to a children’s book which I did read aloud. Same port, different storm.
Bobbie was a beautiful soul. She wanted nothing more than wanting to love and be loved . And how that escaped her. Everything she tried had an extra layer of effort which she wrestled into submission with intelligence , light and great heart. Our children are still best friends.
Children, however, are not ours. And it takes them years to become their own selves. They wiggle from eeldom into some form of morphic light body, their quantum nature fading with time and leaving them at sea in the edgeless shadowed obstacle course of creating a life. Some kids do it easily and end up off a cliff, some struggle and become kings and queens. It’s all written in those Akashic Records I am so sure exist.
The tale of our children’s journies are not ours to tell as much as we need to feel that they are our creations and our reflections. In the end , they are in their own prism portal of confusion and perhaps, eventual clarity. We have little to do with it all, even if there is warmth and sharing in the picture.
There is not one parent that does not cringe and deeply understand the sad madness of the Reiner’s family story. It is terrifying and brave that the ending was created so guilelessly in the send off room of Heaven.
“That’s how you are going to top off your life? That is how you will offer yourself to karma and hope.”
“Maybe it’ll help. Maybe it will settle the score. Maybe it will humble everyone.”
“Are you going to warn anybody?”
“No. I don’t think so.”
“Well, I am ,” said the Angel. “Humans are fragile.”
Take a look at the opening shot in STAND BY ME, the artists favorite film.
And so goes God.
