I cradled Dad’s a last kiss and Head, gave him he slipped away
A year after Robin Gibb’s death, his son shares his moving and intimate memories of the man who inspired him to the very end
THE dark clouds that have hung over Bee Gee Robin Gibb’s magnificent 1 2 t h- c e ntury Oxfordshire home since his death after a l ong struggle against cancer almost exactly a year ago have finally lifted. Today, there is light and joy where all too recently there were tears and heartbreak. For had Robin lived, he would have been anticipating one of his dearest wishes: to be a grandfather.
His son Robin- John, known as RJ, and his pretty blonde Polish-born girlfriend Megan, are expecting a baby in July. They know the child’s a boy, and have decided Robin’s name will be among those he will be given.
‘Now that I’m about to become a dad myself, my sadness has been overtaken by sheer happiness,’ RJ tells me over tea in the family’s timbered sitting room, his father’s Irish wolfhound, Ollie, at his side.
‘Losing Dad was devastating and I could never have imagined feeling like this during the months after he died. We were not just father and son, but best friends. Dad loved children, and would have been thrilled at having a grandchild, and it’s such a shame that he won’t be there to hold the baby.
‘Of course, when the baby arrives we will still miss Dad as much as we do now, but the wonderful thing is that his presence is still here. He will never leave me, because I know wherever I go I’ll always hear his voice.
‘His music is always being played when I’m out and about, as it was when he was alive. So I’ll always be constantly reminded of him. And, of course, proud of him.’
He adds: ‘A lot of people regret not having many mementoes of their loved ones, but we are more fortunate. His catalogue of songs will always be in demand, which means his legacy will always be there. That’s not only a great comfort to me, but to my mother and everyone else in his life who knew and loved him.’
Robin died of pneumonia and kidney failure in the London Clinic on May 20 last year. Ironically, the cancer that he had fought for two years was in remission.
Thirty-year-old RJ, a musician and composer himself, and his mother Dwina were at his side when the end came. ‘I cradled his head and held his right hand. My mother held his left. I gave him a kiss and we told him we loved him as we watched him go.’
At the funeral, RJ fought off tears as he addressed his late father, saying: ‘I will love you always and will take comfort that you are always only a song away, as I will surely hear your voice wherever I go.
‘I will never be able to thank you enough for my upbringing and I will never f orget the time we spent together. I love you so much. You were a brilliant light and a true inspiration to myself and to us all.’
Not long before Robin’s death, RJ and his father had co-written the Titanic Requiem to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the ship’s sinking, which premiered in concert last year and was released as an album recorded with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.
Although that period was emotional and worrying because Robin had to break off at times to have chemotherapy and various treatments to fight the cancer, RJ said he always tried to remain optimistic.
‘He had always bounced back, so it was very hard to tell where things were going to go. He went through some really hard times,’ says RJ. ‘ But we tried not to rush things because we knew that would affect the integrity of the piece.
‘So we tried just to do it really steady and have fun making the music, and not thinking about death or trying to hurry, because he might not have that much time. Of course, I was always AFTER afraid of losing him, but we always tried to stay optimistic and positive.
Robin had died, there was a point when RJ wasn’t entirely happy about the treatment his father was receiving. ‘I felt that more could have been done. The fact is he didn’t die of the cancer really, it was kidney failure, because they were using certain medications that his liver and his kidneys couldn’t handle.
‘Dad was always a fighter, though — a very determined man — and it is a tribute to his tenacity that he fought so hard to survive his illness.’
One of Robin’s big disappointments was that he couldn’t attend the first performance of the Requiem last year. He was actually in a coma at the London Clinic on that night.
‘It was one of the big songs from the Requiem called Distress which we later played him — we put earphones on him — that led to him waking up and coming out of the coma,’ says RJ. ‘So we were able to tell him about the night and show him clips from the performance.
‘It was something he was so looking forward to. In the last year and a half, it was the one place he wanted to be. So it was quite distressing for him not to be able to attend. But I think he was quite proud of the reception it got and which he saw on the screen that we showed him. And he smiled.’
RJ can also console himself with the fact that his father had met, and approved of, his girlfriend, who has a young daughter from a previous relationship.
‘He liked her,’ says RJ. ‘And I think BUT he would have been happy with our situation. Our baby was planned.’
there are no imminent plans to marry. ‘ For now we’re j ust going to l i ve together and wait for the baby,’ says RJ. He and Megan met at a party on January 1, 2011. She had been working in PR after moving to the UK from Poland more than a decade ago.
‘We found we had a lot in common,’ says RJ. ‘We covered everything from quantum physics to medicine and politics, and then swapped phone numbers.’ A month l ater Megan visited the studio where she listened to Robin and RJ putting the final touches to the Titanic Requiem.
Now RJ and 34-year-old Megan live with Dwina at the historic Gibb mansion, set in 100 acres. It is mentioned in the Domesday Book, and centuries later hosted Henry VIII and his young bride, Anne Boleyn. As Dwina, a noveli st and writer of children’s books, joins us in the sitting room, she recalls: ‘Last Christmas and New Year, the first since Robin died, was the hardest. It was the worst time because I have my birthday on the same day as Robin.’ She was 60 on December 22, and Robin would have been 63.
‘I felt sad again at New Year, as Big Ben chimed midnight and fireworks lit up the sky, I heard the skirl of the bagpipes and felt tearful. I’d spent every New Year’s Eve of our 32 years together with Robin and missed him desperately,’ she adds.
‘We had this ritual of kissing each other at midnight, then RJ would do the first footing by bringing in a piece of coal. Robin would put it in a special place for the following year and I would light the old coal from the previous one. To welcome in 2013, we all went outside and wrote Robin’s name in the darkness with sparklers.’
A wide smile lights up Dwina’s face as she talks about the baby. ‘It would have meant so much to Robin to have his first grandchild. He had a wonderful way with children and would have relished his role as a grandfather.
‘Grandchildren would have found him hilarious because he had such a great sense of humour and made everything fun. When RJ was little, Robin would dress up as Father Christmas, with pillows stuffed into his red tunic to disguise himself and fatten himself up. He’d make up strange names for the reindeer and transform himself i nto i maginary characters while enacting little sketches.
‘One day, he and RJ turned the sitting room into a Civil War battle-