Laughing Without Smiling

I lost a friend just before Christmas.  His name was Ian and I'm going to miss him. I spoke at his memorial yesterday. I felt honored that I was able to speak about my friend. And I was humbled that the group who came to say goodbye listened to what I had to say.

Ian and I became friends in 1991 when he and I, along with two other friends moved into a flat in the Richmond. We lived together in a mostly imperfect harmony for about 5 years. We called ourselves The Bubble Family. It was at that flat where we learned to live together, how to be adults, and how to navigate our new lives in a new city.  Getting to know our new city, and each other, we used to drive to a part of The City we had never been to, park, and then walk around until we couldn’t remember how to get back to his car. We would walk around seemingly aimlessly, getting to know each other, searching for his car. We’d finally find the car, and on our drive home, swear we’d never do that again, and then do it all over again a few days later. I always suspected he knew where we were the whole time and it was me who was the lost one, and Ohmagosh, he had the scariest car. It didn't have a 2nd gear; San Francisco hills, no second gear.

My friend was the most kind-hearted and an unabashedly genuine force. My children loved him. I feel so blessed that he was a presence in their lives.  My little ones loved when he would come to our home to babysit. With Ian, my kids knew they would be allowed to stay up as late as they wanted, eat whatever they wanted, and play video games and watch movies together. I was completely at ease with this, because also with Ian, I knew my kids would be safe, warm, and happy. 

Ian infuriated me just as much as he made me love him and come to think of him as one of my closest friends. He held opinions like no other. Sometimes he would make up an opinion on the spot to argue, just to stay sharp; it wouldn’t matter if he believed it or not.  To that end, Ian and I had a lot of conversations, discussions, arguments, disagreements.  Most of the time these discussions and arguments had to do with Star Trek, comic books, and other nerdy stuff we enjoyed. Sometimes they were of more substance; books we’d read, local news stories, moral concepts.  

One of the things we often talked and argued about was God.  We held a number of opposing viewpoints on the subject. Does He exist? Does He have a purpose? What was that purpose? Where God Went Wrong, Some More of God’s Greatest Mistakes and Who is this God Person Anyway?   (yes, I stole from Douglas Adams there)

But through it all, and despite the disagreements, I always believed Ian was a man of great faith; a kind of faith that science would approve of.  He knew (if I may steal from and paraphrase Richard Feynman) that there are two piles in life, a large pile of unknown and a much smaller pile of known. As life’s mysteries are solved, questions answered, we take from the unknown pile and add it to the known pile. Just as people before us chipped away at that big pile, and just as we ourselves chip away at it today, long after we’ve left earth, that pile of unknown will continue to shrink, someone else will continue the work. We don’t and won’t know everything, but Ian had faith that people would still keep searching. He had faith that this unraveling of facts before us would be continued after his departure. He had faith that that pile would continue to shrink. 

Ian loved Science Fiction and Fantasy. Perhaps he loved it because it is the praxis of this faith, a faith that in spite of the negative things we see around us, there is always someone trying to make things better, there is always something to aspire to. There is always hope for a future that was better than what we have today. 

I will miss Ian. I missed him yesterday. After the memorial we went to our friend's house, ate some food, told some stories, and I'm told, after I left, sang some karaoke. I wish he could have been there He would have really like that.