It's taken me a while to be able to say this at all, and I'm pretty sure that my buddy would be on my case about what I'm saying, but I have to say it anyway.
One of our common friends, also a fraternity brother, aptly noted that Keith was "a gentle soul". That he was, and he was more. He was as orny, hard-headed, blunt, and unyielding as anyone I have ever known. He asked no quarter and gave none, but he still listened and considered. He loved to make a point, that's for sure, but he was always open to facts, logic, sound reasoning and positive outcomes. We talked and discussed a lot, but we never debated. Neither of us ever tried to be "right". What we shared, I believe, is a love of meaningfulness in life. Some might want to call it "truth", but in the end, things had to make sense and they needed to make sense in the larger scheme of things as well. Without heat and hammer a strong sword cannot be forged.
Truth be told, Keith and I were rarely the same mind about anything, but, this is most important, Keith was a person you could connect with. As human and imperfect as he was, he had a lot in common with what the Kabbalists call a Tzaddik (a righteous man), one who is toku k'varo ("their insides are like their outsides"), or, as I like to put it, what-you-see-is-really-what-you-get. They are their own persons; that is, in my mind, authentic: they can get hot under the collar, but are never mean-spirited. And, for as odd as they sometimes appear to others, they retain an aura of innocence that can calm even their harshest opponents.
I must admit that I have been allowed to live an exceptionally fortunate life and I've been blessed with meeting a very few, truly exceptional people. And yes, in his own way, my brother Keith was one of them. I'm going to miss him to be sure, but I have to add that as far as he is concerned, I don't have a single, dark, troubling, or even uneasy memory. He was simply who he was.
Time and our perception of time is a big thing for me, and I'm a big fan of time relativity: Einstein once said that sitting together with a beautiful girl for two hours seems like ten minutes, but sitting on a hot stove for ten seconds can seem like two hours. In an analogous way, that's how time was with Keith: short, yet intense, but without any of the pain! There was always just-the-point, and none of that distracting, obscuring posturing and pretentiousness that we have to wade through with most people. He always said what he meant and meant what he said, and that allowed us to cram a whole lot more life into a short span of time.
I don't know if any of you have a Keith as friend, but if you do, be thankful to the very fiber of your being. Such people are rare -- too rare -- but we need to learn from them and grow through them and know why the world is a better place because of a few extraordinary and too often unknown people.
At any rate, I sincerely wish, from the very bottom of my heart, that you have the opportunity to encounter a "Keith" in your own lives. But, when I meet him again, you can rest assured that I'll let him know what he meant to many of us. And, as a mutual friend pointed out, there is a Hebrew proverb that sums it all up beautifully: "Say not in grief he is no more -- but live in thankfulness that he was."
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