Today is May 4, 2025. It would have been Will Rockett's 79th birthday.
He died at age 47 from an inoperable brain tumor.
We had been married for 12 years.

I recently discovered that his sister, Mari, died in 2019 at age 61 also of cancer, just like their parents. The difference is that Will and Mari’s parents - Helen and Bill - both lived well into their 90s before cancer got each of them. I wonder if their bitterness and anger kept them going all those years. I'd never met such unhappy people and could’t fathom the reasons for their dark dispositions. They were both college educated, extremely conservative Irish Catholics and even though they had modest middle-class careers they were so cheap that they were worth well over 2 million dollars when I last knew them back in 1992. (When Will graduated high school with straight A’s he asked for a class ring; they said “Yes, but only after you painted the entire exterior of the house.”) I suppose all the money they hoarded went to Mari and then when Mari died it went to her partner Eeva, a relative newcomer who never had the "pleasure" of staying at the Rockett house the way I had to in my years of being married to Will. He inherited their frugal natures (except when it came to buying books and the latest writing instruments) and so we always stayed in their Cape Cod split level during our Christmas and summer visits.

Bill Senior, the father, was a former FBI agent and we were constantly reminded of that not by anything spoken but by the framed photos of J. Edgar Hoover that were proudly displayed throughout the house. "Dear Agent Rockett," it was always inscribed...I mean, you can't make this shit up! "Thank you for your efforts in your recent assignment..." The messages were always vague, there were never any details in true FBI style. I accidentally found out that Bill Senior did a FBI search on my family. Somehow it slipped out and he turned beet red when he realized how offensive that was to me. Vowels at the end of last names were always suspect to people like him. But the distrust of each other was a two-way street. I grew with both sides of my family being union members and organizers - Dad with the corrupt Lithographers Union & Mom’s side with the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. So I remember hearing stories of family members getting harassed by FBI agents when they picketed companies for unfair labor practices. Phone were tapped; there was widespread distrust of government organizations. Needless to say, there wasn’t a lot of talk about the FBI in the Rockett household, except when Bill bragged that Cape Cod housed an unusually high number of retired FBI agents. There were more reasons for it to be a touchy subject.

While he was in college at the University of Toronto during the Vietnam War, Will received his draft notice and simply didn’t show to up register back in the States. He stayed in Canada and worked his way up the Canadian Broadcasting Service’s ranks as a writer and producer to get citizenship. The gig got him interviews with the likes of people such as Joseph Campbell and Buckminster Fuller. He had hours and hours of these programs on 1” audio tapes that we carried around from one home to the next until his untimely death. Our plan was to someday move back up to Canada and get me dual citizenship and nowadays I really wish we had accomplished that!

Will’s status as a draft dodger was an embarrassment to his FBI father, who resigned soon after to take up a career as a history professor. This was never spoken of during my visits to my in-laws’ home.

Times with the Rocketts were not filled with joy. I never felt welcomed. When Mari came out with her girlfriend Eeva on our last Christmas trip I was getting out Helen's "good china" to set the table for dinner and Helen reprimanded me. "I'm not putting on airs for anyone!" she snapped. "Oh, I just thought it'd be nice for Christmas." To say that this dinner with the newly outed Mari and her “friend” was tense and awkward is an understatement. It was the first time Mari brought a girlfriend to meet the parents. Eeva was a lovely woman who clearly cared for Mari and that was heart warming. When it came up that Will and I would be leaving in two days to go to my niece Dana's birthday party in New Jersey Helen blew up. She went ballistic asking why we'd leave them to see “some ungrateful kid who didn't even know us” and said some very unflattering things about me as she walked about the house screaming. This attack shook me to the core. I had always been polite and respectful to this woman. That was probably a mistake. When she criticized me I should have stood up for myself. But I always bit my tongue to keep the peace. I went into the bedroom and didn't come out. What hurt me most was that Will did nothing, said nothing. He did not defend me.

Later that night, when the coast was clear and Helen had gone to bed, I came out to the living room to sit with Will and Bill. Bill was uncharacteristically kind to me. He tried to assure me that her outburst had nothing to do with me. "I've known this woman for 52 years. She was upset about Mari, not you." he said.

The Rockett parents, I discovered later, pitted their children against each other. When we talked to them all they could do was brag about Mari. We had no idea that when they talked to Mari, they bragged about Will. Yet they never told either child directly that they were proud of their offspring’s significant achievements. Will and Mari grew to resent each other without cause.

Mary and Eeva stayed at a hotel during their visit and I thought to myself, "Why the hell haven't we been doing that all these years? Just show up for dinner?" Even after Bill walked in on us having sex in the basement when he thought there was a fire because we'd lit some candles and he smelled smoke ("Oh, I suppose that's for ambience,” he grumbled.), even after that we still stayed there. And Mari took over the basement when she got her obnoxious, untrained slobbering dog so we had to stay in a bedroom right next to the Rocketts. Oh, joy. There were never any marital relations between us in that house again!

That was our last Christmas there. Just over two months later, on Valentine's Day no less, we returned home from Columbia Hospital in Milwaukee to our new home, a gorgeous Victorian within walking distance of Will's new job as Dean of the School of Fine Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

I recall walking throughout those rooms, greeting our cat Noodle, and feeling like everything in the world had changed. All the colors were less brilliant, less hopeful. Will had spent several days in the hospital while the doctors managed to take down the swelling around his brain. This swelling caused him to limp and eventually slur and get things confused. I forced him to go to a neurologist who asked Will several simple questions. When Will faltered the doctor and I made eye contact. He saw me shake my head, "No. This is not Will." I didn't have to say it. He was immediately admitted to the hospital and soon afterwards lost consciousness.

Within a day or so the swelling went down and Will was back, at least for the time being. He was diagnosed with both a spot on his lung and a brain tumor located in the very center of his brain. Inoperable. Words like radiation, chemo and prognosis were tossed around. We met with Dr. Geimer, the kind and patient head of oncology who outlined the treatment strategy. Oh, and we were told that Will had 3 to 5 years to live.

Will Rockett had been obsessed with death since I'd known him when I was a college student 15 years earlier. He was my film professor and thesis advisor. I talked him into a letting me submit a rather wild stream-of-consciousness meets didactic method of analyzing "Last Year at Marienbad," the 1961 French New Wave psychological drama directed by Alain Resnais. I had been charmed by that film and my thesis was an opportunity to show off my writing skills. Will rejected my first draft, which was heavy on the analysis and light on the creative interpretation. I offered to write in stream-of-consciousness a la James Joyce's Molly Bloom in "Ulysses." It was a lusty and enigmatic triumph. Of course I got an A.

For three years I had a crush on this older man, with the salt and pepper beard, this man who was brilliant, who wrote poetry and plays, who taught film history and production, who hung out with a band called “The Suave Elbows” made up of some fellow classmates and gave a spoken word called “Trotsky” at one of our favorite clubs. In the meantime, I was filming a different band, headed up by the lead guitarist and singer, my boyfriend who was gorgeous, talented, ambitious and becoming a Wall Street mover and shaker. It was a tempestuous relationship, we were constantly breaking up after his infidelities and then getting back together. After graduation, I broke things off once again with Brian.

It was disappointing that I didn’t see Will to say goodbye to him at graduation. But a week later, I received his enigmatic poem, “Greenwood,” the likes of which I have never seen again. It was moody and romantic with vague references to my childhood cottage which he somehow remembered. I called him to thank him...and he professed his love for me. On the phone.

We met in a park near Seton Hall, I moved in with him a couple days later. And six weeks after that we stood on a bluff overlooking Lake Superior and got married. I was 24 years old. My Mother didn’t get the big Italian wedding she’d been planning since the day I was born. When I returned she gave me an estimate of how much money I didn’t receive in wedding presents because I eloped. But I was fine with that. I’d never wanted to get married at all; somehow Will convinced me that we were destined to be together.

At times I wonder if getting married to the man I was enamored with was a way to finally break things for good with the Wall Street guitarist. It certainly wasn't a perfect marriage. Our age difference came into play often as I still wanted to dance in New York nightclubs, get high and be self indulgent whereas Will had done all that in his life already. He just wanted to write in his office at night; I became a kind a widow before I was physically widowed.

There were 3 horrific years in Fredonia New York on the banks of Lake Erie, south east of Buffalo where Will finally had achieved his desire to go from the communications department head at Seton Hall where we'd met to being the Dean of the School of Arts and Humanities at the State University of New York. I left a home that I adored, one we'd just gotten finished renovating, my family, friends, and a solid career as a freelance writer, editor and director. In Fredonia, I taught some classes but there was really nothing there for me. Fortunately I made a couple good friends but for the most part I couldn't trust anyone because they were just kissing up to me to get on Will's good side. I caught the bug that was going around there - Chronic Fatigue Syndrome - and went into a deep depression.

I recall sitting in our backyard, facing the lake, and saying to Will: "I don't want to die here."

After many interviews - including one at a university in Portland where I really wanted to move to - Will was offered the job in Milwaukee. We had a friend in Fredonia, Rose Klassen, who had moved with her husband from Milwaukee and she always spoke so lovingly of her time in that city. So I had pre-good vibes about Milwaukee; that probably would not have been the case if the transition had been from my beloved South Orange, New Jersey to Milwaukee. No, my time in small town Fredonia made Milwaukee look like a jewel. And in many ways it was.

We clung to the idea of "3 to 5 years" as a prognosis.

Who knows? In 3 years there could be a cure! Or different treatments!

I went to a support group at the hospital, Will refused to go. He became increasingly distant and impossible to reach, going deeper and deeper into his own world. This man, who'd written about death and been obsessed with it, was now facing death and just couldn't be present with it, at least not with me.

I made the mistake of thinking that my Love would save him, that if I loved him enough and hope and prayed hard enough that he would get better. But Will had to believe that.

He was in his dream job, living in a beautiful house with his beautiful wife (that would be me) and he sank into a hopeless abyss.

The diagnosis was in February, in June he was transported by ambulance to the hospital for the last time when he lost consciousness at home.

He spent the next 3 months in the oncology ward of Columbia Hospital. My Mom came out from New Jersey to be with me; other friends visited. He was in and out of consciousness, and most of the time he didn't know who I was. At one point he sat upright and looked me straight in the eye: "Don't worry, Brooke. I'm going to die and you're going to marry Dr. Geimer." When I told Mom about this she said: "Well, Dr. Geimer is in love with you. Don't you know that?" I didn't know anything of the sort. All I knew was that my husband was never coming home, our new home, our new dream.

On September 2, 1992 at 8:30 am - the first day of school at the University just a few blocks away - Will breathed his last breath. Mom and I sat there, holding his hands. She had given him the kind of love his own mother never could. She would wake up very early and go to the hospital to sit with him and just be there. The Rocketts visited a week earlier and when it became obvious that Will would not survive they abruptly went home. They never asked if I needed any financial help; I tried to stay in touch with them but the phone calls were not reciprocated.

Dr. Geimer came into the room and put his arms around me. I
'll never forget what he said: "What you're feeling now is the price of commitment."

Exactly three weeks later at 8:30 am, our cat Noodle died in my arms.
My little family was gone.

There I was in a new house, a new city. I had to rebuild my life one brick at a time. My broken heart had to heal myself now for I finally realized that I couldn't heal anyone else, certainly not Will.

He made a tremendous impact on the students he taught, the actors he directed in the plays he wrote, the listeners to the many CBC shows he produced in Toronto. He wrote many books of poetry and his archives are maintained at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee library.

Ironically he dedicated his last book to me, referring to me as a "theater widow." But I'd rather remember the hundreds of poems and notes he dedicated to me. Maybe some day I'll gather them together into a self-published book. He once said he was going to make a book of images called “The 10,000 faces of Brooke.”

There were many inequities in our relationship that ebbed and flowed over those 12 years. I experienced being worshiped by a brilliant man, but being worshiped doesn’t insure happiness.

Now that I'm over 20 years older than Will was when he died, remarried and relocated with a heart that's been broken and mended many times over, I realize that it was impossible for his love for me to survive the devouring whirlwinds of this world.

RIP Will Rockett.
Born May 4, 1946
Died September 2, 1992

Thank you for reading.
copyright 2025 Brooke Maroldi

PS
Here’s the description of Will’s book, out of stock but listed on Amazon:
Devouring Whirlwind: Terror and Transcendence in the Cinema of Cruelty
”As the popularity of the genre increases and special effects are pushed to greater extremes of terror and cruelty, more and more people have begun to wonder, what is the attraction of horror films? Do they have any socially redeeming features? Rockett offers some surprising and provocative answers to these questions in his analysis of the cinema of cruelty. First commenting on our fascination with experiences that transcend the world of ordinary reality, he looks at film as a means of expressing the dark side of human nature. Next, he examines the essential ingredients that go into the making of a horror film, the variations that are found within the genre, and the links between the best horror cinema and Artaud's Theatre of Cruelty. Echoing Artaud, Rockett argues that human beings are attracted to horror in films because of an unconscious craving for a reality in which the demonic supernatural acts as a living whirlwind, devouring the darkness and bringing viewers closer to the transcendence they are actually seeking. The final chapter shows how the finest works in the horror genre achieve this underlying aim. He discusses filmmakers such as Roman Polanski, who have been able to provide the realism and artistic quality that contemporary audiences demand while preserving the ambiguity and terror necessary to experience the power of transcendent force. Rockett's skillful and imaginative exploration of the subject will be appreciated by scholars and general readers concerned with popular culture, film, literature, drama, and contemporary social issues.”