greater love hath no woman!

[revwardoc]

http://stpetetimes.com/2004/08/28/Fl...eaded_lo.shtml

RIP, my bullheaded love

LARGO - You could have called Ken Kobin irascible, curmudgeonly or exasperating. His plain-spoken wife Pat preferred "bullheaded." In his obituary. In the St. Petersburg Times. For all the world to see. How could his widow have written such a thing? The answer is rooted in the deepest mysteries of grief, humor and memory. She explains it best herself.

You must have wondered how your obit would go over. Were you worried?

This was my tribute. The thing is, Ken had been in hospice for two years and four months with congestive heart failure. I took care of him at home until the end of last August when he really became violent. I think it was related to the medications; there are so many side effects. I think they enhanced the negative sides of his personality. It meant he had to go into a nursing home. The first one could have been a stage setting for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, I'm not kidding. So it was that much sadder. We got him into a nicer one.

Then when Ken died, his face suddenly looked 20 years younger. There was no more grimace. The beauty of that change was a real grace. I could see him again. I wanted to put a tribute in the paper that would remind us of who he had been. I had actually written something two months ago, when he had the beginnings of pneumonia and had gotten pretty ornery with the nursing-home staff. He'd say, "Leave me alone; I just want to watch TV." I'd tell him, "I'm going to write about you." He'd say, "I know you are." So one night I came home and just wrote it. I wondered if I would tick someone off with this, but I thought, "I don't care. I married him."

How would Ken have liked you getting the last word?

I think he would have loved it. I always told him, "Food is your biggest thing. Or maybe TV. Or maybe the dog. Somewhere down the line there's me."

He'd say, "Well, you have your place."

I look at his photo and the mischief in those eyes and the way his jaw is set, and I get it.

In the nursing home, he wasn't much of a talker, but he had always engaged people. We were "home-stay parents" for the ELS Language Center at Eckerd College, which meant we had young people staying with us all the time. He teased them. Always at the dinner table. It caused a great deal of laughter. If you're teased in an American way, you learn your English really fast. He had this impatience. He couldn't restrain himself from telling you what he thought. He couldn't wait in a restaurant line. He had to walk Buster with no leash. If someone said something, he'd say "F-you." If I said something was white, he'd have to say it was black. He was born in Brooklyn. That explains a lot. I used to say he was from another planet.

How'd you get together?

He was really well-liked among people who knew him. He had a voice like silk and could sell anything. He could sell ice to an iceman. I met him when I went shopping for a stereo. I drove him crazy with questions, then I left without buying.

But I went back a month later.

I said, "I was here before and saw the stereo. I want to buy it."

He said, "We don't have it anymore."

I said, "Good, I can't afford it."

But he really did have one and I bought it and he showed me how it went together.

Then he said, "Do you date?"

I said, "Not very well."

He said, "That's okay, I don't really want to go."

That was how it started, 18 years ago.

You weren't kidding about cremating the remote.

The remote is going with him. As well as Bucs and Gators game schedules. (His ashes will be interred at Bay Pines National Cemetery on Sept. 8.) I told his nurses, and they howled. He would never call for help when he was hurting, only when his remote wasn't working. He would walk through the nursing home with it stuck in his belt. So he's taking it with him to heaven.