“Listening to us breathe in the dark,” a eulogy for Robert A. Reid M.D. by Heather L. Reid.

As many of you know, my dad was born in Italy. This is because his father, Homer Reid, was an adventurous young man who, in the late 1930s, went to study opera there.

Probably on a Genoa beach he met a petite young Italian named Lea Maria Moretti and they married on September 3, 1938. They settled in Milan on Via Fabio Felzi, next to the central train station and a half-hour walk or so from il Teatro alla Scala, where my grandfather was studying.

On June 8, 1939, at 9:21 p.m. (you can do the math, they make it just barely), Roberto Alfredo Reid (as his Italian birth certificate calls him) was delivered by Dr. Giuseppe Grossi — apparently my dad’s earliest role-model. But the war in Europe quickly heated up and only five months later the young family took a train to Napoli, where they boarded the SS Exeter and landed at Ellis Island on December 13, 1939.

Now, I know all this detail because I recently moved to Sicily and needed the documents to apply for Italian citizenship. I like to say that by going back, I am balancing out what Italy lost when my father left — or maybe my grandmother, since my father wasn’t there long enough even to learn the language.

In any case, even with my return, America clearly got the best of the deal, since she gets to keep all three of his male children, his eight grandchildren (the last of whom was born just weeks ago), and three great-grandchildren (the last of whom was born the day before he died), with many more to come.

In fact, my dad was never legally Italian since his father was American and he left so soon. But after I grew up and began spending time in Italy, I realized he had a distinctively Italian character, and it is this I would like to celebrate today.

Now, I know what you are thinking — that I am about to talk about my dad’s passion for great food and wine, or his love for beautiful women, fast cars, literature and the performing arts. And those are, arguably, Italian characteristics. But what I want to celebrate today is his generosity of spirit.

The generosity I have in mind is not measured by the quantity or even the value of what a person gives. Paradoxically, it has more to do with what they don’t do. A truly generous person does not give with their own interests in mind, does not try to influence or control those they give to, and does not expect to be rewarded or even noticed for their generosity. Let me illustrate this with a personal story.

Sometime in the late 1960s, when I was 3 or 4 years old, we piled into the family station wagon to take a road trip. I used to get car sick, so dad gave me some Dramamine, which immediately put me out and I slept soundly as we drove, waking only for meals and to use gas station restrooms, which held some weird fascination for me as a little girl. After eight or 10 or 12 hours of driving, we pulled into a roadside motel for rest and I miraculously came to life.

Did I mention that, as a child, I was often, to put it delicately, a brat? So, when I came to life, I stared running circles around the room, jumping between the beds and using my older brother, Bobby, as a combination trampoline/punching bag.

My exhausted father realized he wasn’t going to get any rest with me in that state, so after several failed attempts to reason with me, he decided to give me something to calm me down.

Well, I think he made the mistake of telling me that because he says it had the opposite effect and I only doubled my rambunctiousness. So, he gave me a little more and just as suddenly as I had come to life, I was back asleep.

Now the young doctor was worried that he had given his precious daughter too much sedative, and so he stayed up all night listening to me breathe, to make sure I didn’t stop.

I bounced awake the next morning asking for pancakes and raring to go, totally unaware that he had been monitoring my well-being all night.

He loved to tell that story, like so many others, but it wasn’t until I was well into adulthood that I realized my dad had been listening to my breathing in the dark throughout my entire life. He inconspicuously protected and supported me in everything I did, regardless of whether he agreed with my choices, and even when I was being, um, a brat.

Love and support without judgment or manipulation — this is what I mean by generosity of spirit and my dad has given it not only to his children but also to his own parents, and step-parents, and cousins, and friends, and patients, and I’m sure some of you here today plus many more that we will never know.

He spent his life listening to us breathe in the dark so that we could play happily, thinking we had simply slept well.

That was Bob Reid’s generosity of spirit and on behalf of my family, I ask all of us to honor his memory by being as generous as we can with each other, even — and maybe especially — when we don’t agree.

Bob Reid died December 24, 2021, in Santa Barbara, California. A memorial service was held January 2, 2022, at Valle Verde in Santa Barbara.

Arrangements were by Welch-Ryce-Haider Funeral Chapels.