Elegy for Rob Matson
The young man in the photo on the home page of this site passed away. He was twenty-two years old.
He and I were volunteers with the same organization in the New Orleans area, at different times. In 2006 I was a volunteer with Emergency Communities in St. Bernard. I stayed with EC from January until June when the operation in St. Bernard closed. After the closing in St. Bernard, EC opened a facility in Plaquemines Parish. I never went to Plaquemines Parish, but Rob came to New Orleans that summer and heard about the operation there.
Rob volunteered with Emergency Communities that summer. He left later in the year and returned to New Orleans in January, 2007. By that time, EC had opened a facility in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans. As it happened, at that time, I was commuting between St. Bernard and New Orleans and passing the facility in the Ninth Ward almost every day. I stopped in often. That is when I met Rob.
The first time Rob saw me, he came over and sat with me. We talked and became friends. Rob was documenting his time in New Orleans. He carried around a composition notebook which he stuffed with notes and papers. I was writing and waiting to attend the Tennessee Williams Literary Festival.
In the spring, Rob left to go to Alaska to work. He asked me if I wanted to join him on the adventure. I had already had a lot of adventures on my life journey, so I stayed in New Orleans and attended a playwriting class.
In mid summer, I left New Orleans to work on a project in rural middle Tennessee. Rob kept in touch. He contacted me when he got back from Alaska and came to visit in Tennessee. He stayed about three weeks.
He and I spent a day helping to clean out a barn in preparation for the Idapalooza Fruit Jam festival at a neighboring commmunity. It was a music festival that attracted young people from all over the country. Rob would have loved this festival, but he left just before it happened. One day he asked a friend for a ride to the bus station and he was gone.
It seemed Rob didn't know what he wanted to do next. He didn't want to go back to school. He wanted me to come to Meadville, PA, to help him edit video. He had asked me this when we were in New Orleans and again in TN, but I never knew when or if he was going to go back to Meadville to stay.
Rob was bright. He was extremely intelligent, and a young man with many ideas and plans. He had a big smile and a laugh that brought cheer to whoever would hear it. He made friends everywhere he went.
He could quote lines, even whole scenes, from movies. One night, he and I and Sterling, in the kitchen of a pre-civil war cabin in Tennessee, I asked Rob about something he'd said or quoted earlier. Word for word he recited Jack Nicholson's speech at the campfire in Easy Rider. If I'd heard the lines before, I'd forgotten them.
Another time, at a party on Labor Day, we were talking with our friend Billy. I mentioned a scene from Pulp Fiction. Rob performed the lines from the scene.
This past winter, without thinking of anything in particular, I picked up Easy Rider on dvd at the public library. When I heard Jack Nicholson give the speech in the movie, I thought to myself, "That's Rob. That's Rob's speech." I watched the scene several times. They were headed to New Orleans. I had forgotten the ending.
Rob's mother found my Nascent Constellation chapbook among his things after he passed away. All of my stories are about the people, friends, "who form a nascent constellation and hold a place for me." Rob has joined them and I thank him for shining his light on me while we were here.
At his memorial service, held at his college in Meadville, Rob's friends raised $5,000.00 for the American Red Cross Hurricane Katrina Relief Services.
Rob Matson, September 2007.
Thanks for reading.
Peter Demers
You can purchase my two publications with Google Checkout or Paypal. They are now available as digital editions (PDF) from the store at Fromoutoftheblue.com - Nascent Constellation and My People, digital edition - ebooks
