IN MEMORIAM

Robert Brewster
Portsmouth, NH
b. February 15, 1954
d. October 1, 2005

The death of Bob Brewster, who has been our accountant for a decade, came as suddenly this month as news can. The obituary just appeared one day in the paper as if by some catastrophic mistake. We had not known he was ill. The paper offered no explanation.

There is no accounting for shock. Bob's departure was every bit as stunning here as the disappearance of Elvis or Lady Di or the Twin Towers. And then comes the aftershock as we learned, for the first time, who he had really been.

Bob as the quiet and yet amazingly confident guy in the Texas string tie who sucked up all our troubles each year at tax time and handed back a neat little booklet of forms. We signed them, mailed them and never heard a word from the IRS. Well, that's not exactly true. There were a few years there where the government computers were determined that, although we had paid our taxes, that they were owed a second helping. Bob kept telling them they had it wrong. They kept sending two tax forms. Bob fought back and eventually wrestled the IRS to its knees.

Bob knew everything about us. He knew about the breakup and the marriage, the rise and fall of income, the bank totals, the bathroom remodeling, the car crash, dental bill, payroll and the collection battles. Every cent we earned or spent passed by him.

And in return we knew that he had twins. That he went to Portsmouth High. That he liked to take an hour for himself for lunch even on April 14 when the phone cried endlessly with other people's woes. But that was about it. Accounting is not a two-ways street.

We followed Bob from his cramped Court Street office, no bigger than a potting shed, to the stark, brick professional building on Woodbury, to the comfortable room with the grand view of the North Mill Pond just a few blocks away. Things seemed to be getting better for him, although his fee never changed in ten years.

We knew only by rumor about the two hip operations, his days at Phillips Exeter, his wife Brenda, the kids' soccer, the vacations in Arkansas. We heard only lately that he died from a staph infection long after the surgery. "Thank God, he had a few days to say good-bye to his family," another client told us. Then the walls fell down.

It is a testament to Bob's skill that so many of us in town are again worried about the looming tax season. The man who made so many troubles go away has gone. Whatever they say about death and taxes seems especially apt this fiscal year.

Years ago we came to him with shopping bags brimful of receipts. This year we planned to email him our financials on a Quickbooks file. He would have been proud that, finally, we were getting our act financial together. He would have laughed, said very little, asked the same questions, charged the same fee, and neglected to total his life into the balance. And we would have forgotten to ask.

We spent, in an average year, between 30 minutes and an hour together. It wasn’t much time, but it was time enough for Bob to bring the world back into balance. In a world already so out of alignment, Bob Brewster will be greatly missed.