Seven years ago today, my brother Bobby died. He was 20 years old and I was 18, although even now as I sit here at 25, he still looks older than me when I picture him in my head. I\’m guessing it\’ll be like that until I\’m 80.
For the first few months, I would think that I saw him when I went places. I\’d be at the store or something and I\’d hear a voice or someone would walk by and I\’d do a double-take. It really hurt every time I realized it wasn\’t him, so much so that I finally quit double-taking altogether. The look-alikes and sound-alikes would still walk by me, but I literally trained myself not to look beyond peripheral vision and would just focus on trying to enjoy those couple of seconds where it actually felt like he was there. I\’d never turn around to see if it was or wasn\’t him, and the feeling would just fade naturally and completely within a minute or so, and I\’d move on.
I write this not because I think you want to hear about my prolonged personal grief and craziness, but because I haven\’t ever \”publicly\” addressed his death, and well, there might be a fair amount of you out there who don\’t really know the truth. There\’s probably also an even fairer amount of you who never knew him. So, I\’m hoping this helps everyone understand things a little bit better. (And to those who already do know the truth and did know Bobby, I\’m sorry, you\’ll just have to sit through hearing about my prolonged personal grief and craziness…)
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Right after the \”gossip\” hit the street that a 20 year-old punk-rocker had passed away in his sleep, the rumors started flying. Drugs, suicide, you name it. Some people had the decency to call us to verify or debunk stories they\’d overheard, but many were apparently just accepting them as fact and breaking their neck to tell everyone they knew. Of course none of the rumors were true — my brother wasn\’t doing drugs and for the first time in years was actually excited about and looking forward to his life and wouldn\’t have wanted it to end so soon — but, you know, it\’s really hard to debunk rumors when you have no other explanation.
You see, to this day, his cause of death is listed as \”undetermined\”. We simply don\’t know what happened and never will. He just didn\’t wake up one day. There are now some speculations that he had an undetected heart problem or something, but no one has ever been able to look me or my family in the eyes and honestly say why he isn\’t here anymore.
I know it\’s cliché to say the kinds of things I\’m about to say — it\’s the stuff you generally hear about anyone who dies — but my brother truly was a great person. Not only was he my bandmate and best friend, he was also my hero and the biggest source of inspiration I ever had and will ever have.
Everyone who knew Bobby liked him — a lot. Being the humble, self-effacing guy that he was, he would always say how he didn\’t have any friends (and it\’s true that he didn\’t have very many), but then anytime you\’d go somewhere with him, there would always be someone come up with a big smile to shake his hand and ask what the heck he\’d been up to lately. He may not have had many friends, but he sure was a friend to a lot of people (the attendance at his funeral was proof to that).
One of the reasons why people were drawn to him is that he was enormously funny. If you\’ve seen any 41 Gorgeous Blocks album covers (with the exception of \”It Isn\’t Supposed To Be This Way\”), then you\’ve seen some of his artwork and maybe have an idea as to what his odd sense of humor was like. His favorite medium of art was the captioned, one-panel cartoon strip, and his were downright hilarious (I plan to publish a book of them at some point). And actually, one of the things that I\’m the most proud of in my life is that whenever he was working on a cartoon and needed a name to use in the caption, he\’d ask me for help.
\”Matt, what\’s a good last name?\”
\”I don\’t know. Banks, maybe?\”
He\’d just smile and look back down at the page as he finished writing out Mr. Banks\’ caption in ink.
I had always been (and still am) in complete awe of his humor. Two weeks before he died, I actually picked \”My Brother\’s Sense of Humor\” as the topic for a descriptive paper I had to write for my English class. The assignment was to \”describe your favorite thing\”.
Probably the other reason so many people liked my brother was because he was genuine. He was the real deal. He was the kind of guy who if he told you he\’d call you back in an hour, your phone would ring in 60 minutes. He wasn\’t perfect, and never tried to be, but he was extremely sensitive and always did what he could, frequently going out of his way to help people with their problems, big and small. (Right before he died, he had told me that he wanted our next show to be a benefit for this homeless guy he talked to every time we went to Deep Ellum. I\’d never even noticed the guy.)
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After the ambulance had taken my brother away, and after my parents and I had followed it to the hospital, and after we sat in the waiting room for what seemed like decades only to have a lady come in and tell us, \”I\’m sorry, but…\”, and after I listened to my mom scream like I never dreamed she would, and after I saw my dad look completely helpless for the first and only time in my life, and after my girlfriend and her parents rushed up to do whatever it was they could even though they knew nothing was going to help, and after I rode home with my sister and her husband on the most quiet yet most confusing car trip known to man, and after getting interrogated in my own bedroom by some detective asshole who told me he \”knew\” what my brother had been doing and where did he keep his \”stash\”, and after I finally got the chance to just sit the hell down for a minute and think, I began to realize that life would never be the same.
It\’s kind of funny, though. He hasn\’t said a word to me in seven years, but somehow I\’m still learning things from my brother. All it takes is just a little bit of thinking and a memory will come along and hit me upside the head like a gigantic fist, knocking a tiny bit of sense into me. With each blow, I can feel the little bits of knowledge and understanding stacking up in my head. My hope is that, eventually, the final punch will be delivered, and I\’ll look up one day and totally \”get it\”. I just hope the brain damage isn\’t too severe.
I miss you, Bobby. We all do.
![\"Bobby/](\"http://www.41gorgeousblocks.com/uploads/Bobby)
Robert Wayne Riggle, Jr. (1977-1997)
Posted by Matt Riggle @ 11:18 pm
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