November 5, 2011
Grace Church, Providence, RI
I don’t know most of you and for that I am legitimately sorry. My name is Jesse Strauss, and I had the good fortune to live with Evan senior year in a house we called “The Wolf Den” for no other reason besides it was cool. And it was.
I would like to start with a quote from Kurt Vonnegut if that’s ok with you.
“It is just an illusion here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone, it is gone forever.”
This illusion we all share is both a great truth and a great tragedy. That we can watch moments, an infinite number of them in fact, go by without acknowledging how special each one is.
We all shared moments like these with Evan: moments that we did not recognize as the irreplaceable and invaluable things they were as they were happening. Powder days at Vail, Dark and Stormy’s on the beach, the simpler pleasure of grilling on our back porch watching my dog Ella and Evan and Anne’s beloved Brady play in the yard.
Too often by the time we try to reach out and touch these moments, they’ve already joined that great clump of beads at one end of the string commonly referred to as “The Past.”
But Evan had the power to cut through this illusion, and it didn’t take much. No ski pass or beach or piece of steak was necessary. No context was required at all, just the man himself.
When my father was diagnosed with his own serious illness eighteen months ago, it was all I could do to not stop and scream. Tragedy upon tragedy, it was almost too much to bear. Almost too much.
Without my friends it certainly would have been. It was always Evan who asked how my dad was doing and, what’s more, how I was handling it. Was I Ok? This wasn’t just a formality or some idle conversation, Evan really cared and not just about my dad, but about ME.
Take a moment to think of how insane that is.
I would answer as best I could, stammer out a few “It’s rough dude”s or some other non-response that made it clear that I just didn’t know what to say. His selflessness floored me each and every time he asked. That Evan could find time in his day, despite everything that he was dealing with, to look after my emotional wellbeing says it all. He had every reason in the world to avoid the topic, but he would look me in the eye and say “How are you doing?”
These moments cut that illusion for me. These moments are NOT gone forever. Consider when we would toss a ball straight up in the air for the dogs to fight over. At a glance the ball goes up and down in one fluid motion. But in truth there is a moment when the ball has gone as high as it can and is about to start heading back down. But it hasn’t. There is a moment when it isn’t going up and isn’t going down. It is just floating there. To truly see that would be nothing short of miraculous. That is the power of the present. And Evan could show me that with “How are you doing?”
Think back on your own moments with Evan and see them as I do. Not as the past, never to be repeated, but as timeless instants, each its own miracle, you will with you forever and always.