Rob always hated it when I told him how much I worried about him.

“You don’t need to worry, Dad,” he’d assure me, having no idea that I didn’t have a choice. I worried about him from the day he was born until the day he died.

I’m a worrier by nature and, in Rob’s case, by nurture. I worried about him when he was a baby and wailed like a banshee. I worried about him when he didn’t have that many friends in grade school. I worried about him when he was hanging out and doing who knows what with his tight group of friends in high school. I worried about him the day he got his driver’s license and shortly after that, when he got into a fender bender the first time he drove the new car we’d just bought for him.

I worried about him when he first went off the deep end at 17 and had to be hospitalized. I worried about him when he and his girlfriend moved to Binghamton, and a few........

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