THE USUAL NOTE FROM LB: From the summer of 2002 to the spring of 2010, Gwen the Beautiful and I were the proud and often exhausted owners of a beautiful Ozarks property we called Cloud Creek Ranch.
In many ways, the ranch was paradise. But it was a paradise with a price that started going up before we even knew it existed. Here’s another Monday musing about our adventure and the lessons we learned.
Oh, and if y’all detect any irony, please believe me when I say it comes straight from the universe and not your kindly Uncle Larry B.
by Larry Brody
Show business and the world at large lost a treasure recently, when one of the best men most people have never heard of died.
That man was Robert Sabaroff, writer, producer, musician, husband, friend. Possessor of a mind awesomely analytical yet spiritually profound.
Bob was far from a household name. His biggest successes came in the ’60s, when he wrote the feature film The Split as well as several episodes of Star Trek, and Star Trek: The Next Generation.
He also wrote a ton of other TV shows and produced one called Then Came Bronson, which was critically acclaimed but lasted barely one season.
Like Bob himself, the show was an iconoclastic piece of work. No guns. No crimes. No trials. No life-or-death surgery. Just a guy on a motorcycle, driving across the country and meeting people trying to deal with the same problems all of us struggle with everyday.
Of course the show was doomed.
For me, it was as a human being that Bob Sabaroff really shone. Bob was a bastion of integrity. A man with values not often found in show business—or, for that matter, in the world at large.
Values centered around four short words:
“Do the right thing.”
My friendship with Bob taught me that I could be myself, crazy as I may be, and find acceptance.
It taught me that I could be open and honest even if I vehemently disagreed with people, and still find acceptance, even respect.
And it taught me that I could be intelligent and knowledgeable and not hide it, and—that’s right—still find acceptance, and maybe even admiration as well.
Because that’s how Bob lived. And not only was he accepted and respected and admired, he was greatly loved.
The space in which these words are appearing exists because of my friendship with Bob Sabaroff. The writing I call “Live! From Paradise!” began as a series of e-mails I sent to him in which I talked about my life.
I would tell him where I’d just been, what I’d done, who I’d talked to, and who had talked to me. And then the next day I would read his reply, and if something got his curiosity going I’d expand on it and share the new version with him as well, eager to read his reaction and learn what I could from it.
Those reactions were so deep, so moving, and so encouraging that I took the next logical step (logical, that is, for someone who’s been a writer all his life) and sent the e-mails to Betty Barker Smith, publisher of The Baxter Bulletin in Mountain Home, Arkansas, along with a note that said, in essence:
“Make room for this! Please! Make room!”
Which the effervescent Ms. Smith very kindly did.
The local paper appearance turned into a blog, and then found its way onto various other newspapers and interweb sites, resulting in hundreds of thousands—maybe millions?—of readers of the words appearing right here. Readers who so often do me the honor of sending me their e-mail reactions in return.
Reactions I read eagerly, and from which I learn much more than I can explain.
Just as I learned from Bob.
His responses, however, have been missing for several months, since he was diagnosed with the leukemia that killed him long before those of us he left behind were ready. Ever the ethicist, Bob never told anyone outside his immediate family just how serious his condition was, or that he was undergoing radical chemotherapy.
He never told us how high a toll both the illness and its treatment were taking.
“It would’ve been wrong to tell you,” he said to me just a couple of days before he died. “It would’ve caused way too much pain.”
Not long after that conversation, I awoke filled with fear. The weight of the world lay on my chest. Then, suddenly, it lifted. I felt only peace.
“Bob? That you?” I called out to the darkness. “Come visit. Join the rest of the spirits here on The Mountain. Make yourself at home.”
The next morning I learned that Bob had died at the same moment I awoke.
If you got my message, My Brother, and you’re here, watching and listening, then take this message as well:
“Thank you for giving me so much of yourself. And giving me so much of myself too.
“Most of all, thanks for letting me love you.”
