Joy of Russell

If you could be truly happy for
one year, even if it cost you the rest of your life, would you take
the deal?

We buried Russell Shaw in Ft. Lauderdale Sunday, in
a crypt at the Star of David Cemetery. It was a tragic day until his
fiancee, Ellen Green, showed me some pictures she had taken of them
last summer and fall.  (In this picture, Ellen is at the center and Russell’s mom is on the right.) 

That
tight line of the mouth you remember from my own tribute
was gone. In its place was the most amazing, beatific grin. The
clouds which seemed to surround him like his beloved Oregon sky were
parted, replaced by a look of peace and content.

That’s the
Russell his family wants you to think about, and they’ve set up a
special memorial page
where you may add your own thoughts. They hope that, through his
writing and links and connections to the cyberworld, he might be
remembered, kindly, as more than magnetic ink, as a man in full. Cry
for yourself, not for him. He finally found what he was looking
for.

Tommy Bass and I had driven down from Atlanta feeling
very sad for Russell, seeing only the marriage he would never have,
the opportunities he would miss. But this was not the message of
rabbi (and blogger) Kurt Stone (left).
His body just gave out, he said. What man supposes, God
disposes.

Russell’s family saw him as brilliant and gifted,
wanting only to make his mother and sisters and cousins proud of him.
They were, always.

But I knew he was also troubled. He could
be crude, and judgmental. He was slovenly, and unkempt. He worried a
lot, about money and getting work. He was needy, sometimes
superficial. He wrote knowingly of things he’d just been told, then
argued as though his were the final word. He could be exasperating.

There was a general feeling of unworthiness to him, a
neediness, as though he had to buy love. My wife asked me once what I
saw in him. Well, he was loyal and kind-hearted, he always tried
hard, he was what I might have been without her. He was like the mutt
you might leave staked-out in the rain, who would always bark and wag
at your approach, until you realized he was better than those
purebreds, inside. He wanted it more.

After Russell moved to
Portland, in the late 1990s, he often flew Tommy (right) from his home in
Americus, Georgia, just to work on his computer or home network. He
would take Tommy to restaurants, give him gifts. Tommy was gracious,
and we should treat all our disabled war heroes as well. But it was
unnecessary. In exchange Tommy sought to minister to him. When he
could not change him, Tommy accepted him. 

Preachers
would say Ellen healed Russell, poets that she completed him. His
family certainly noticed the difference, and it was this they wanted
to talk about after the service. In the last year he even came back
to his faith, they said. Rabbi Stone and his editors agreed his
writing improved, it became more direct. My cruel joke was Mrs. Shaw
"lost a son, but gained a daughter." Ellen was treated more
as a widow and long-time family member than a fiancee or final
girlfriend. She brought gifts.

I found the whole scene eerie,
and tried to make light of it. I don’t do tears well. I prefer jokes,
and laughter, in the face of fear. But I was touched. Though I had
never met Russell’s family, and hadn’t even known he was Jewish, they
recognized me immediately, from the pictures on my blogs. They came
up to me before Tommy, who had known him longer and better, who
treated him with far more kindness. They asked about my kids. They
said Russell talked of me often, with fondness and pride. I was
humbled, but left smiling.

One of my nastiest jokes was about
the service taking place on Easter Sunday. "If he comes out of
that casket I’m not worshiping that garbanzo for the rest of
eternity." But I realized as we headed back home he had in fact
been resurrected, over the last year, in all the ways that matter.

That question I posed at the top. It wasn’t a question. It’s
just the way God deals the cards to us sometimes. Many of us never
find happiness, or know any peace. Russell did. These are tidings of
great joy.

As we drove north through the Florida swamps, a
great cloud appeared on my left, in the formation of a mountain,
backlit by the Sun. "See how Russell brought his mountains here
to Florida?" I asked Tommy, as I snapped a picture. "It’s
an Easter miracle."