| in memory of Albert |
[Nov. 15th, 2009|08:44 pm] |
[As some of you know, a couple of months ago my friend Albert passed away at the age of 73. Albert was one of my oldest friends, one of the first people after my parents that I ever loved. He came to represent the best parts of my childhood, and I feel as though I've lost a part of my childhood with him. I was asked to deliver remarks at his memorial service yesterday, and I'm posting the text of those remarks here. Partly it's as a record for myself, and partly it's because he was an extraordinary person and I want to tell you all about him.]
There was something remarkable about Albert, something you could feel when he came into a room. You could feel it in the way his big hands would reach out to grasp yours in greeting. You could see it in the improbable repertoire of whimsical expressions that danced across his face. You could hear it in the way he’d say something outrageous that somehow made you feel warm inside. He knew everyone in that room—or if he didn’t, he wanted to. He wanted to hear their stories, and he was always ready with a good story in exchange. He wanted to introduce them to each other, and figure out what people and what interests they had in common. It wasn’t just that he was friendly and charismatic, although he was both. His way with people was a manifestation of something that ran deeply in him—something precious and very rare.
Albert was a person who knew what was important to him, and he was devoted to it. He didn’t bother with things that were unimportant to him. He didn’t worry about being late, or about getting lost, or about learning how to cook. He didn’t strive for worldly success—I think he thought it wasn’t worth the compromises it demanded of him. And he didn’t strive for virtue, at least not in the abstract. He was a good person because he had a big heart and generous impulses—he didn’t need to work at it.
What he strove for was happiness. It sounds like an obvious thing, when you say it—you could get anyone to agree that happiness is important. But although people may say they value happiness, they frequently don’t act like it. Albert, on the other hand, took happiness seriously and valued it highly--perhaps because, while goodness came easily to him, happiness did not. He waged an ongoing struggle against depression, claiming a life of joy and fulfillment as an act of deliberate will. Albert actively sought to be happy. And he sought actively to bring happiness to others.
Albert was not a snob where happiness was concerned—he sought out pleasures of many kinds, and he relished them. But I think that there were two sorts of joy that he sought and prized above all others.
The first was a joy derived from beauty. Albert took a passionate delight in experiencing beautiful things, and in creating them. His love of music I need hardly mention—the vigor with which he played, the zeal with which he grumbled when the music flagged and crowed when it soared. But his quest for beauty, and his skill in creating it, was not limited to music. He and his siblings transformed their family home on Lake George over many years of loving labor: collecting, carpenting, renovating, furnishing, finishing, and always tinkering. Every room is a work of art—even the bathrooms. The house stands witness to the breadth and the keenness of his aesthetic vision, and to the sundry skills that enabled him to execute it.
But more even than beauty, Albert sought happiness through other people. He loved people immoderately and without reserve. He had many friends, and he continued making new ones until the end of his life. He shared his music with them, and hosted them in his beautiful house on Lake George. I can’t imagine how much energy it takes to care so much about so many people. But he did care about them—he cared about them all, and he made sure they knew it. You could hear it in the tone of his voice when he made yet another outrageous crack about your love life. You could feel it, in the grip of his hands. He rejoiced in his friends, and his joy was contagious. It lit up the room when he walked in the door.
The way Albert died was a tribute to the way he lived. He spent the last months of his life ensconced in style— and in as much comfort as medically possible— under Denise’s care, practically holding court as an unending stream of friends and family crowded around to tell him in thousands of different ways how much they loved him. As he lay dying, his hospice room was crowded by people who took turns holding his hands and playing music in the hope that some part of him might hear it. In all of this, he was simply reaping what he sowed. A life like Albert’s is surely its own reward.
In the last few weeks, I have come to appreciate how inimitable Albert is, how altogether irreplaceable. And I’m glad of it—it makes it so much easier to remember him, to hold all the memories together in my head because, really, who else would have said or done something like that? When I think of him now, I think of a line by the poet Horace, which translates “Mingle a little folly with your wisdom.” I remember the time Albert ran out the battery in his motorboat because he stayed out too long admiring the moonlight on the lake. I remember trying desperately to get someplace on time, and failing utterly because Albert was so interested in the conversation he was having that I couldn’t tear him away. I am overwhelmingly grateful, for the privilege of having known this man whose little follies attest to his great wisdom. Albert was a person who knew what was important. Remembering him, he will remind me. |
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