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In Loving Memory of Robert Wayne Holden

My favorite picture of Bob and I. This is how I want to remember him. Having fun when we were young :) this is etched in my mind forever and we were truly happy at this very moment...I love this picture :)))))) I loved Bob....

On Tuesday November 28th, 2000...Bob lost his battle for his life and left us to go to a better place called Heaven.... Bob was my friend for more than 20 years...He had many nick names "Ho Bob" - he travelled like a Ho Bob on the trains and went across Canada as a teen! and then of course "Crazy Bob"- you'll see why after you read this... From the moment I met him, I knew I have found a wonderful friend..He always had ideas!!!!! Mostly crazy ones but thats how he became known as Crazy Bob...He was so smart, a borderline genius who at times was never truly appreciated...Whenever something happened, you could always count on Bob to have a solution and you could bet, it was nothing you would have thought of! Bob liked and owned motorcycles, trucks and a cool limo. I used to get picked up at work in a limo, and I always felt special walking out the courthouse door and there was my friend Bob (you never knew how he would be dressed hahaha, once he picked me up from work wearing a gorilla mask in his limo..I wish you all could have seen the look on my co-workers faces when that happened, I still laugh about it. Shock would be a mild description. We loved to party and Bob was great at that...In fact, I want to state that without exception, Bob always grew and had the best Phred!!! We party hard and always had fun and laughed and laughed. Something Bob was famous for was his "FLAMES"... I look back now at all the times we all would chant "Flame! Flame! Flame!" and Bob would willingly after the "Come on Bob, pleeeeeassseee give us one". It didn't really matter where we were, outside on a roof top, or a tower or in my kitchen, Bob would throw a flame. He did it with lighter fluid and boy, he had it down to a fine art. I personally witnessed him doing this many, many, many times and they were all great! Some were like almost 30 feet! I cheered along with everyone else. Now I wish I hadn't but that's why hind sight is always 20/20 :( Looking back, I can't help but wonder if that wasn't a contributing factor to him developing Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma 5 years ago. There are 3 main ways of getting it..Black/brown hair dye, pesticides and petroleum products...Now Bob hardly had hair let alone dye it, was very concious about chemical things later on when he grew up at about 40 yrs old LOL... but I bet its the lighter fluid...Bob fought this and had apparently won the battle and then BAM O, IT'S BACK! He was a funny guy, kept to himself and was always on a quest for a beautiful lady, a goal he wanted most to achieve. He fell in love often and was always, someone elses childs Dad. They all had kids and Bob loved the kids and the Mom's...yet always had probs-well he was Crazy remember LOL In the end, he became a Christian and had found a lady named Holly, she had never been married and had he survived, Bob said he was going to marry her. So he died happy at least.. I want to make a quick note here.. Ron, was a pillar of strength through all this..Ron, there is a special place in heaven for you..You were strong for all of us and you showed the kind of friend you are... a gentle loving one. If I ever find myself in this shape, I hope your common sense is there for me :) This has to be the hardest thing in life to do, but you did it! Thanks from all of us, we all love you :))and glad you're our friend too:)I know that meant a lot to Bob, and I know he feels the same way too..and Barbie..you are a brave soldier. It's not always easy being a friend is it :( I think all of us have come away from this experience stronger people and I KNOW BOB"S WAITING FOR EACH OF US ON THE OTHER SIDE!!! This was an awful thing for Bob to have gone through and for all of us that comforted him in the last 2 weeks of his life to have witnessed....total liver and kidney failure, as a result of a bone marrow transplant...he went through hell! I wasn't the cancer that killed him..It was the anti-rejection drugs :(

I loved him with all my heart, and now I feel empty. I lost a part of me last Tuesday...I am in shock over this...I want my Bobby back!!!

FLAME, FLAME, FLAME!

This is Bob doing a flame in my kitchen!

Bob was someone that thought for himself and he knew what he wanted when he passed away...It was a little bit of a shock to say the least, when in the hospital the morning he died, we found out what he wanted....He didn't want the traditional funeral stuff... No sir re Bob! He wanted his friends to just take him from the hospital morgue and put him in the back of his truck and take him and bury him and ff we cared enough, have a party in his honour! So, this was certainly a test of friendship... So without the assistance of a funeral director, his sister bought him a plain pine coffin as he requested. She took it home, got the burial certificate and arranged to have his grave opened, beside his Mom who passed on a few years ago... Then on December 1, 2000 at 9 am, his 8 closest friends (named over the picture below) with whom he grew up, his sister and myself went to the hospital morgue. The staff there, wrapped Bob up in a nice warm blanket, he was buck naked(he would have liked that hehehe!) and that's how we sent him to heaven..the same way he came into this world. Then we all had something we had put into his coffin.. I put the picture you see above, the poem I have posted, and one perfectly beautiful red rose...I suspect the guys had tokes loaded in there too, just in case... then we took him, in his casket from the morgue, loaded him into the back of his truck and went for a tour... As we were driving around, all of us were laughing, yet in our grief, this bizarre act of love seemed to be the essence of Bob, and I KNOW HE WAS THERE WITH US. We ended up going through a Tim Hortons drive through, we all got coffees and one for Bob...Bet the staff had no idea they made coffee for a dead man heheheh... Then we went to the grave site, drank our coffees and this picture was taken...I look at the coffin in the back of Bob's truck and his friends that loved him enough, to have had the fortitude to do this final act of love and I felt comforted...This was exactly how Bob wanted it to be...He went thur hell in his final days and there was something about taking him ourselves and not letting anybody else do anything intrusive to him anymore and we looked after him. What greater love could you have for a friend...At the end of a Beatles song (off Abbey Road I think!) there's a line that says "and in the end the love you take, is equal to the love you make". On December 1, 2000 at 11 AM each one of us felt those words profoundly. The song by U2 "Beautiful Day" was playing and ya know, the words, the feeling that song envoked was like it was written for this moment in time and I will never be able to hear that song again and not be reminded that it was the song we sent him off with. Bob is now settled into his new home and I for one will be sure its always decorated....I miss him :( and Christmas just won't be the same this year....Bye Bob...Till we meet again...Au Revoir mon ami...a bientot!

Bill, Leo, Roger, Ronn, Tim, Dave, Steve and Ben, Bob is the one in the back of his truck!! The way he wanted it! So we did it!


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