Stunned again by sudden death.
Thirteen days ago, I spent a delightful early afternoon with my longtime tax man – all right, CPA – in his glass-dominant upper story Olympic Boulevard office that opens to a magnificent panorama of the Westside.
This year was a new experience for both of us. We were doing taxes alone. First time. Diane had died last summer, three years into a onesided fight against ALS.
Diane had utilized Jerry Rabin’s extraordinary accounting talents long before we met and married.
We had to be one of the luckiest couples west of Portland, ME. We were relaxed inside his office, as at ease talking business with him as if we had been schmoozing any favorite relative.
No tax-linked expenses, God forbid, to hide, to shade, to alter. Games he did not play.
Diane was the straightest shooter — socially, personally, professionally — of any human I have known. Mr. Rabin was her ethical twin. Therefore, I was the best armed person on the planet.
If the accounting world were filled with Jerry Rabins, the IRS would have dried up before the horse and buggy.
Our annual scenario with Mr. Rabin must have been xeroxed in days of yore. Not even a transgendered comma ever was out of place.
Every March, Diane and Mr. Rabin would write the headlines. I would stride in, sign on several dotted lines, wheel around and vanish.
Diane’s death brought massive disruptions in all significant areas of daily life.
It felt odd 13 days ago sitting alone in his office with Mr. Rabin.
Looking fit as he did at the turn of the century, conversation flowed as purringly as unclouded creek water ambles over freshly scrubbed, almost glowing, rocks.
Said he gave up driving 2½ months earlier.
Except for a smidgen of independence, he almost did not miss it. He was proudly conserving money traveling to the office via Uber, and lately in the evenings when he and Mrs. R would go to dinner.
Given the vagaries of the mystical tax universe and recent alterations in my fiscal latticework, I was surprised when we parted that I only owed Mr. Rabin one tame document.
We never saw each other again.
I was shocked when I opened the Los Angeles Times this morning. Mr. Rabin, 82 years old, had died at home late Monday evening.
