Death Cannot Stop True Love. All It Can Do Is Delay It For A While.

Note: Spoilers ahead for Stand by Me.

You can do everything right. You can make the most of your life, work hard, be a delight to your friends, a devoted husband and father, try your best to make the world a better place, yet still, horrible things can happen to you for no good reason. We were all reminded of this awful reality earlier this week upon learning the news that Rob Reiner, the beloved filmmaker and actor, was killed along with his wife Michele Singer Reiner. Killed. They didn’t die peacefully in their sleep. They weren’t surrounded by loved ones. Their own son ended his life and the life of the woman he vowed to love and cherish in a fit of rage. I cannot imagine how soul-rending their last moments were, experiencing such a deep betrayal.

This essay isn’t intended to vilify the son. I don’t think, despite everything that’s happened, Rob or Michele would have wanted anyone to do that. But there is something so existentially bleak about how hard Nick Reiner’s parents worked to pull him out of whatever dark place he found himself in. Yes, I am aware that this family had more financial resources than most others, but plenty of other wealthy families have disowned their “black sheep” for less. There are mothers and fathers who would have given up on their children suffering from homelessness and substance abuse. Rob and Michele never did. They rooted for him throughout all eighteen of his rehab stints. Rob even directed a roman à clef about a young man fighting the same demons as his son.

That film isn’t one of his more widely-remembered works, but it’s pretty hard for most movies to stand up to anything Rob Reiner directed in the 1980s and most of the 1990s. It’s often hyperbolic to describe a movie as “iconic,” but that is an objectively true description of at least four of them directed by Reiner. This Is Spın̈al Tap, The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally…, and A Few Good Men are the kinds of films that people can recognize even if they’ve never actually seen them. If you’ve ever described a significant other in your life as “High Maintenance,” if you mentally read “YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH!” in Jack Nicholson’s voice just now, or have encountered the “You Keep Using That Word” meme online, Reiner has influenced your pop culture vocabulary.

And those are just his directorial achievements. He was also the co-founder of Castle Rock Entertainment. Anyone a fan of Seinfeld? That was brought about through Castle Rock. Do you agree with Joey that The Shawshank Redemption is the greatest movie ever made? Castle Rock produced it.

But it would be inappropriate to pretend his only contributions to the world were through his artistic output alone. He was one of the few Hollywood figures to actually put his money where his mouth was on progressive causes, contributing a great deal of his own money and time into funding childhood development programs, helping organizations working to expand LGBT rights, and reducing America’s collective addiction to cigarettes. Two out-of-touch Broadway millionaires hated that last thing he fought for and devoted an entire episode of their decades-past-its-prime animated show to their resentment, but Reiner was ultimately vindicated; cigarette smoke is far less pervasive in our everyday lives now, and we’re all better off for it.

There’s one other movie he directed that I haven’t mentioned, yet. It’s called Stand By Me, and a not insignificant portion of his fans cite this as their absolute favorite. One of its running themes is learning to accept that bad things can happen to you even when you do the right thing, and the importance of having close friendships to support you when they do. These four boys wanted validation from the adults in their lives for “discovering” the body of a missing boy, but what they needed was to support one another while navigating the unfairness and callousness of life. Chris needed Gordie’s sympathetic ear when remembering the time Old Lady Simmons double-crossed him, and Gordie needed reassurance from Chris that his father doesn’t really hate him at all. You’re going to be betrayed, hurt, exhausted, and lied about in response to doing what you know is the right thing. Like Chris, trying to do something good may end up killing you. But as long as you have someone in your life by your side who cares about you, it’ll still be worth doing.

Even after writing that, this all still feels so wrong. It feels so wrong to be reminded that I, like Rob Reiner, can make the decision to forgive, or support, or lend a helping hand, and having something truly horrible happen to me or someone I care about in return. I guess I’ll never really know what the consequences of our good deeds will be in the end.

Jesus, does anyone?