As a kid, growing up in a Jewish household, you end up immediately identifying with Jewish celebrities - for better or worse.

And my first one that I immediately latched onto was Mel Brooks. Dumb humor, with a Jew-y overtone, and the most childish jokes, but with a sense of intelligence and counter culture that was just easily appealing.

That eventually strung out into learning about his duo with Carl Reiner and the amazing work they did to essentially create the world of comedy that came after them.

That, combined with a level of love of movies, led me toward more and more movie discovery, only to find that Rob, Carl’s son was the director of some of my favorite movies.

Whether it was The Princess Bride, This is Spinal Tap, The American President, and on and on he was somehow touching all of my favorite things. In college, I took a marketing class, and the professor was a former head of marketing for a studio, and did the marketing for Spinal Tap and made sure we saw this trailer and to this day it’s one of my favorite advertisements for anything ever.

He then also was in a number of my favorite movies and TV shows (I realize he got his start acting but in my world, that’s not what I knew him for).

I cherished seeing him having dinner with his dad, or with his dad and Mel Brooks, or when Mel’s son would play pranks on his dad when Carl was there - they felt like distant relatives that I was just keeping up with.

So when the news came out that Rob Reiner was killed in his home with his wife, I felt like I’d lost a family member. A treasured friend. A mentor. A model for how to move through the world. And someone who knew how to have fun.

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And it again showed me that you don’t know what’s really going on with anyone. We know that his son is somehow involved, and we know that he has had issues with mental health and addiction.

But speculating further is just that - speculation. You might be right! You might be wrong! Who knows!

So instead, this is just a reminder, that people are complex. There isn’t a way to know everything that’s going on in someone else’s head. As much as we try, even as parents, to be empathetic, caring, understanding and thoughtful… we often miss the mark. Not out of malice but out of ignorance.

We are all ignorant.

We are all learning.

And we don’t give each other nearly enough space.

It’s the lesson of so many of Rob’s movies.

When Harry Met Sally is all about how these two people clearly love each other but can’t see past their own bullshit to just be there for one another.

Stand By Me is about kids growing up and feeling out of place and how they can work together to feel like a team even when they’re not understanding each others backgrounds.

The American President is about how judging public figures without knowing the full story is folly and you should be more caring about what people show you than what you suspect.

A Few Good Men is about taking all these different reports of the same incident to try and find out the truth between the stories.

The Princess Bride is about people inflicting pain on one another blindly and finding ways to live with that pain, whether it’s through revenge or love or just helping someone.

Every one of them is about a gap in understanding being filled to create a richer and better world. It’s about discovery. And learning. And empathy. And care.

And he’ll never know that those lessons were imparted to me. And I don’t know if he knew what he meant to people, or if he knew that he was teaching us how to be better people. He might have just been trying to make fun movies. He might have been trying to make the world better. His life heavily implies that he was trying to make the world a better place for everyone to live in.

And what happened to him and whatever led to this awful ending will never be less awful. That story was already written. But I’m going to instead of wallowing in the pain and sorrow that I feel I’m going to put on some of his movies, and some of the things of his that brought me joy and hope and remember that even if he’s gone, his impact will live on.

As long as we remember him.