It is Sunday night 8 pm. The doorbell
rings and Joanna and I both are running down the stairs to see who it is. Our
hearts feel like they want to jump out of our chests, our minds are rushing;
the thoughts are chasing each other with the speed of light inside our skulls.
We do not look at each other, we do not stop on our way down, yet we both know
that we both think it must be Russell. Who else would ring the bell on Sunday at
8 pm, unannounced. The feeling is eerie, just as the empty porch is, as we stumble
down to open the door. It cannot be Russell, Russell is dead. We received the
news barely 24 hours ago.
I met Russell about 10 years ago.
We were at a party and I was followed by this strange looking funnily dressed
man all night, at least it felt like it. He popped up from seemingly nowhere
every time I wanted to pour myself a glass of grapefruit juice. He grabbed the
jar out of my hand and poured the liquid into my glass himself. WTF? Am I drinking
too much of the precious juice? Does he think I will spill it on the carpet? It
is not even his house! Then we were all ushered out to the balcony, about 20-25
of us. The funny little guy was outside on the other side of the parking lot
downstairs, camera in hand barking us instructions: move to the right, to the
left, squat down, look left, stop talking, stop breathing… And 5 minutes later
we were allowed to talk and breathe. And days later I received a picture of the
highest quality, everybody’s face showing, smiling, making everybody looking
better than in real life. Years later I asked Russell, what was the deal with
the grapefruit juice. He just smiled mysteriously shaking his head never
revealing a thing.
Friday night dinners:
Then it all started. We met for
dinner every Friday night for ten years. Russell and his friends, who in turn became
my friends as well. The weekend was unimaginable without this. Our American
born friend, the soul of our party gathered us together; a loud, sometimes obnoxious
group of people from all around the world to have ethnic food. In the beginning we ate at different
restaurants of which he had tested during the previous week. Later we ate more
often at our house. He was the decider, sometimes stubbornly overruling our
requests for the type of food we wanted. He was the one who picked up the food
sometimes spending hours in line waiting for it but never complaining. He
delivered the food. And if he was late,
we were pissed and we complained, knowing perfectly well that he was doing his
best. Did we ever thank him enough?
Shaking hands:
Russell enters a room full of
people. He goes to everybody and shakes hands, man or woman – he was not the
hugging type, but he never missed a hand. There is one exception: he greets the
dogs first. Sits down on the floor and plays with them for a minute or two.
Gets down to their levels literally and figuratively. He loved dogs and people
as much as he loved life itself. But he also shook hands with the people who
served us at the restaurants, the waiters, the owners, the busboys. He sought
out the cooks. He thanked them for what they did. He just felt that it should
be done, to show appreciation and respect. The night before he died we were out
having dinner at Baladi’s. We all enjoyed ourselves and after paying we set out
to leave. Not Russell, he walked up to the owner, shook his hand and chatted
with him for a while. He praised the food and the dessert. In other words, he
was Russell.
Culturally insensitive:
Our inside joke about Russell. Yes
Russell you were culturally insensitive. For people who knew him it was really
funny, because he was anything but insensitive. He cared and felt for people.
He studied and read about different cultures, religions and political views in
order to understand them. But he asked questions that nobody dared to ask. Yet
he listened to the answer! How many times did we hear him saying: “I am
listening.” Through him we got to know each other much better. During dinner
out of the blue he asked, so how was your typical day when you were 16 in Leningrad, (St. Petersburg), Russia? How was your
childhood in Finland? What did you do as a child in Colombia? And indeed, isn’t
it important to get to know a person well? And isn’t it important to know how
one grew up what one’s dreams and circumstances were early in life?
And for us he sometimes was
annoying because he was able to like people who had totally the opposite view of
life, of politics, of religion than ours. He wanted to listen to them. He saw
the good in them. I am not sure how he did it but he did. He could never be
angry with anybody or with anything or at least it seemed. We waited at a
restaurant for 90 (ninety) minutes for our order to learn that they did not
have what we ordered. Russell did not raise an eyebrow. He was just as patient
and kind as ever. It annoyed me, in fact it pissed me off. I guess I should
have learnt from him. He knew how to be happy and how to make others happy. No,
he was not insensitive culturally or otherwise.
Mensch:
The computer broke. Call Russell.
Need a ride at the wee hours of
the morning or a pick-up at the airport at midnight? Call Russell.
Need to go shopping and need a ride
because you don’t have a car or because you just don’t feel like driving? Call
Russell.
Need advice about car repair?
Call Russell.
Are you moving to a nearby town
and need somebody to drive a U-Haul? Call Russell.
And yes, Russell would come, fix
your computer, drive you to the end of the world or pick you up from hell, fix
your car or move all your stuff. And never, but never asked or expected
anything in return. He was the true embodiment of altruism. And we took advantage
of him. I think most of us did, I know I did. Did I thank him enough? I doubt
it. But even if I did, he would have
just smiled and shrugged. Because I am convinced that his life was to help others.
He did it because that is what he loved. And that is why we loved him so much.
I am a grown-up man and I have tears in my eyes as I type this. He was what we
call a MENSCH!
And we, the ungrateful friends,
were mad at him when he did not answer the phone. Which happened often. But maybe, just maybe,
he did not answer because he was busy helping somebody else. Or was talking to
somebody and felt it would be rude to interrupt his conversation by answering
the phone. He was for years planning to write a book titled the Rules of
Conversation. If he had written it maybe we would know the answer.
We were annoyed ( but at the same
time giggled) when he made us all cram into a 2x2 space pretending it was some
kind of a transportation device he was inventing in order to save energy and
make the world better.
One of us got really mad at him
when he did not show up in time to take her to her naturalization interview. He
forgot because he ran into two previously unknown Guatemalans who needed help. Could
we really be mad at him? Or was it just fun for us to complain about him when
deep down we knew how lucky we were to have met him, to call him our friend.
How can we go on without him, was
one of the first thoughts we all had. Some of us just thought that, some of us
voiced it loud. Was it really selfish? Perhaps, but it is true. None of us
knows how we can go on, or rather all of us know that the world will never be
the same without him. Our lives will
never be the same. We took him for granted.
Russell lived in the present, his
laugh was heartfelt and contagious. He sometimes was so amused that he clapped
like a child. That is why he was so endearing. He had the naiveté, the innocence
of a child. Yet he probably was smarter and a deeper thinker than most of us.
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The silliness of Russell was contagious
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Russell
lived in the present. He never
considered himself or his own future. He was stubborn, he ignored his own
health. And he managed to make us mad even in his death. We all ask why he
could not take care of himself? And we all know the answer, because everybody
else was more important. We all feel guilty, why could not we take care of
him???
We will go on, we will have our
Friday dinners. I hope that we learnt a tiny bit from him, how to pay attention
to each other, how to listen, how to help others, how to be better human
beings. I know I can never be like him.
Not sure anybody can. But maybe a touch better. I know he left the world
a better place.
