Bob G.O.

On September 11, 2007, Robert Mumford went missing. On a day pregnant with reminders of recent catastrophe, a humble Defence Department employee never returned to work from lunch. Robert had been with Defence since leaving school, and my acquaintance and friendship with him extended from about that time, though I do remember him vaguely from school.

Robert was a kindly, self-deprecating soul. Never mean-spirited, always obliging and wonderfully eccentric, Robert never really seemed to settle into life. To take a hold of it. Those things that he most craved, marriage, children and a life shared with another, never materialized. In truth he never came close and his life, or so it seemed to me, was like that of a lonely wanderer. When I first met him, he would happily drive hundreds of kilometres of the NSW countryside with no other purpose than just driving. Around that time he had a penchant for visiting anyone with whom he had a short acquaintance. He would appear unannounced on their dinner-time doorstep, an eager if hapless mendicant.

Robert had a photographic memory for license-plates and a mind for calculating esoteric quantities. He once told me how many Navy F4 Phantoms it would take, nose to tail, to stretch from the Earth to the Moon. He may well have been the most knowledgeable person in the universe on Beach Boys trivia. He had a brief if infamous career as a stand-up comic. He once hit a tee-shot backwards across a four lane highway. He was intelligent and had a mind that might have done great things if only he had had faith in himself.

I write in the past tense about Robert because a death-notice appeared last week in the Blue Mountains Gazette. I don't know the exact details, but its clear from his listed age that he passed away not long after his disappearance six years ago. The world is poorer for the loss such a decent man as Robert. In life, he often lived a tortured existence.

But now Robert, you can rest in peace.

well...

There may be a theme that emerges from the last half dozen posts. They amount to thin offerings, considering the passing of months. But it's only time, after all.

In explanation, I offer love. Yes, I had a shortish love affair with a lovely woman, one in which the exchange of poems, principally haiku, became the coin for denominating absent affection.

More I will not say. Everything is too recent. Perhaps another time.