Yahrzeit / Bob Gutterman

 The rains will come and save you

You saw clouds approaching…

Let their water confront your rightness

Be happier…than you’ve been been been…

You know? Float on?

Find the right place on a ‘New’ cloud. 

You weren’t born 100 years ago. That then isn’t now. You’re tasked with handling this one. This reality. This ‘now’. 

Don’t feel hopeless. Don’t feel helpless. Float on. 

It doesn’t matter what is next. It doesn’t matter what is left. There is still now.

FLOAT on….

Two crazies, NYC / 2018

Getting hammered at my sister's wedding 2016

In the rotunda at Westfield Center 2013

Robert "Bob" Bruce Gutterman 

Today is Bob's yahrzeit. The one year anniversary of his death.

A lot has happened in that time. I'd like to say it was mostly good, but that would be untrue. The fact is that I spent the last year barely keeping my head above water, dealing with nightmarish legal issues around the estate that cratered my health, and barely preventing my eviction from a house Bob paid off in 2018. The estate executor felt generous in letting me stay if I paid market rate rent, which would have been $8,300 a month. Such a deal!

Some people need to kick a grieving widow out of the house four days after their husband (who paid for it) died in it. I didn't realize 'fiduciary responsibility' meant you gave up having a soul. I also just found out yesterday that the thousands of Bob's CDs I was forced to leave behind because they were part of 'the estate' are now being 'disposed of'.  

Are you mad yet? Did you know I had to pay more than $50,000 in legal fees to be subjected to this? I'm working with a brilliant writer friend who is going to help me tell this story with Bob's blessing. More on that in the fall. That part of the story isn't over yet.

All of this is to say that in jewish culture the year following the death of a loved one is mean to focus on the change and the absence that person's life force has left in the world. Instead, I got to play the legal hokey pokey for an entire year. The bile I have built up can't be measured. I'm trying ti find some way to write something less hostile for Facebook but its really taking all day and all night to try and write something clearly. I'm going to leave this here for now. Not sure if my thoughts are cogent enough or not for mass consumption. 

In other news The 27 pieces Bob donated to the Crocker Museum in Sacramento have been sorted and some are already on display as part of their current shows. One is a still life show, which includes the Jeanne Duval and Pamela Carroll pieces, and a separate print exhibition which includes Hockney's 'Table Flowable' print. 

He would be so happy they are there, being enjoyed. He said he was only ever a 'caretaker' of the art he had. 

God I fucking miss him. Grief is awful, starless and bible black. The void. going on forever and ever and into nothingness.

I guess that's where I'll find him.