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Last Sunday, a Celebration of Life was held for Robert E. Andrews at the Des Moines Country Club.  My beautiful niece Logan and Chris got married on Saturday and I had a graduation party to attend on Sunday, so I could not be there.  I am blessed with an older sister and four younger brothers.  A while back I adopted Bob as my other brother. 

Marcia and I were married in August of 1965.  Bob and Joyce were married in Des Moines in July of that year.  We both moved into the lower level apartments in Century Court on Lyndale Avenue in Richfield.  Later, Bob would name them the “Lyndale Barracks”.  (Bob was a cook in the Army Reserve.)  One evening we met the Andrews couple during a tornado warning.  We both were outside watching the storm.  It turned out we had apartments that were next to each other.  Joyce hated being away from Des Moines, so it was not long before Bob and Joyce moved back.  Bob went to work for his uncle C. Mac Chambers who owned an insurance agency.  We would go to Des Moines every April so that I could do Bob’s income taxes and they would come to Minneapolis every Thanksgiving so that Joyce could shop at Dayton’s. 

Bob was a shock jock without a microphone.  Our bedrooms were back to back with thin walls, so we could hear Joyce scream when Bob would “Let one go” in bed and then pull the covers over Joyce to make her smell.  Most of his jokes were not fit for any company, let alone mixed company.  We both ended up divorced and sometime in the nineties we reconnected.  There was no reason for us to be friends.  We were exact opposites in many ways.  He drove over 300 miles to Bowlus for my 70^th and my 75^th birthday celebrations and drove home the same day.  In 2018 he showed up with a MAGA cap.  Bob would do anything for his friends.  One time he called me to ask about the special recipe for my Dad’s baked potatoes.  He was going to be baking 70 potatoes for a friends get together.   He would call me the day before my daughter-in-law’s birthday to make sure I would not forget. 

There are way too many stories to tell about Bob.  The point is that brotherly love does not care who you vote for. 

As his young widow said to me this week, “Did you ever guess that we would miss those awful jokes?”   Yes we do Bob.  Rest in Peace dear friend.

“Grief is not a task to finish, and move on, but an element of yourself.  An alteration of your being. A new way of seeing. A new definition of self.”  Gwen Flowers.