Quote of the Day

My Dad was a “peculiar duck” to use one of Dad’s favorite phrases.

And Josh was his peculiar duckling.

One of Josh and Dad’s favorite pastimes was to sit on the couch, with the volume on the TV all the way down as they talked and talked. A particular joy was brainstorming what sort of hats Norman, our Basset Hound, would look best in.

After nigh upon Talmudic debate of the question, they concluded that a Pickelhaube, the spiked helmet worn by the imperial soldiers of Kaiser Wilhelm, would be best.

And, really, who are we to argue with that?

Of course, Josh worshipped our father, which probably explains why one of my earliest memories is of helping Josh make a giant portable poster of the sort carried by political protesters, it read “Bring Back the Czar!”

And, then there’s Mom. Nobody who knew Josh and who knows my Mom (even by reputation), can doubt how much of her was in him. He got his fearlessness and irreverence from her, and his stubbornness too. He loved her and she him. I shudder to think of her loss for fear of being pulled down by it.

Yes, my Mom and Josh fought. And Dad and Josh fought, a lot. And Josh and I locked horns more times than I can count. Everyone who loved Josh fought with Josh, because we all saw so much in him, more than he ever saw in himself.

Josh’s last job was working for my mom. He created a web forum called “The Connection” – a name that is more apt than I realized because in the last 48 hours I’ve been inundated with email from people who knew him only electronically. They’ve told me how they lost a friend, a confidant, a conversationalist. He made a connection with so many people, because that was his gift.

Of course, the most important connection in his life was with Chantal, his wife and best friend. In the 20 years they’ve been married, I never heard him say an unkind word about her, even as a good-natured joke. In the swirling storms that buffeted his life, when he was plagued with self-doubt and beset with legions of demons, his one anchor, his one True North was Chantal. He never wavered from his devotion to her.

In our marriage vows we swear to stay together in sickness and in health, through good times and bad. And no two people I have ever met have ever stayed truer to an oath.

I cannot pretend that Josh was without more than his fair share of faults. He was the first to admit that he let himself down by letting others down from time to time. I think it is important to be honest about this because honesty about his shortcomings is what allows us to see his strengths so clearly.

And Josh’s worst fault was his failure to appreciate how truly wonderful he was when he was at his best.

On 9/11 when most of us were glued to our TVs awaiting the next development, Josh had already put on his boots and walked down to Ground Zero to help out any way he could. It simply hadn’t occurred to him that he should do otherwise. He spent days, without sleep, clearing rubble and, eventually, driving barely filled body bags from the site.

When Josh was at his best, he was simply the best person I knew. The Joys of Yiddish says that a mensch is “someone to admire and emulate, someone of noble character. The key to being ‘a real mensch’ is nothing less than character, rectitude, dignity, a sense of what is right, responsible, [and] decorous.”

That’s the brother I will always strive to remember and it is the uncle I pray my daughter remembers, because he loved Lucy as if she were his own. Perhaps that’s because she shares the same fearlessness or perhaps simply because he was, always, obsessed with family, much like our cousin Lynne and uncle Ralph, to whom I am so grateful for their help during the worst week of my life.

I won’t lie. I’m furious with my big brother for leaving before his best days could be realized and before we could re-forge the closeness of our childhood. I’ve cried so much this last week, I feel like I’ve drained a hole in my soul. But now I’m afraid to stop for fear I’ll forget how I loved him so terribly much.