Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler » Blog Archive » Goodbye, Old Bastard and, Dare I Say, Friend

Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler » Blog Archive » Goodbye, Old Bastard and, Dare I Say, Friendt is with great sadness that I learn that LC & IB Acidman has passed away.

Rob and I go back a ways in this crazy world that we call the Blogosphere, yet I only ever had a chance to meet him in person once, this year in Austin. I’m glad I did, because I always wanted to meet him. Of course, now I wish that we’d had time for more than a handshake and few minutes of chatting, but such is life. Full of regrets about what might have been, regrets that really serve no good purpose. You’ve got to play the hand that life dealt you.

And the hand that Rob got wasn’t a particularly good one. But he played it, to the best of his ability.

Oh yes, he was rude, outspoken, at times downright obnoxious, but he was always true to himself. True to himself and honest to the point where it sometimes hurt. I admired that, even when some of the things he said made me cringe, because you always knew exactly where you had him. And beneath that rough veneer, beneath all of the raging against the fading of the light, there was a warm, loving man. Most of all I remember his posts about his love of his son, Quinton, in which the “softer side of Rob” shone through like a beacon.

That’s a side of him that I’ll remember well. A side of him that showed me and everybody else who cared to read that, no matter how much anger and frustration one man holds, there’s always more to a man that, that there is good as well as the bad and the ugly.

Some will remember him for the bad and the ugly, some will remember him for the good. I will remember him for all of it.

Because it was all him. He let it all hang out, that was his gift to anybody who cared, and I accept it all gratefully. Warts and all.

Now, since his second-to-last post contained a farewell, that he’d had enough and was going to end it all, there’s bound to be a lot of speculation as to the method of his passing. I don’t care. I want no part of it. There, but for the Grace of G-d, and all that. If there’s to be a judgment, then I leave it in the hands of G-d, because He is much better at it than I am.

What’s done is done. I lost a friend, but I find comfort in the knowledge that he is in pain no longer, and I pray that his loved ones find the same. I also pray that he finds peace in the hereafter and that he passed knowing that he, for all his faults, was loved.

And if you didn’t, Rob, I’m going to damn well tell you in no uncertain terms when we meet again.

Goodbye, you old asshole.