The service was very simple: Gretchen Thompson, the hospice chaplain (and alumni of my own First Universalist church) led the service. "Everybody Hurts" by REM was played, and then those of us privileged to speak were to do so.
Right before the service started Tanya handed me a poem that Steve had written in high school and asked if I would read it. It was on a mimeographed sheet, faded light blue, and full of typos. I had minutes to prepare. Since Steve was known as and referred to as "Moldy Ramone," I changed a couple of lines of his high school tribute to the Rolling Stones into a tribute to the Ramones.
Tim went first, reading a brief piece from behind the pulpit. In order to differentiate Steve's poem from my own writing, and in keeping with the spirit of the piece, I began by reading in front of the pulpit.
They've done it to me again, dammit, But I don't care. The wrath knows no outlet like the pummeling of eardrums under the sweet sound of a wicked song. My shirt is shed, a makeshift microphone I clutch in my clawed fist. Performing to a mute audience Gyrating, careening off the wall Third degree carpet burns on my elbows and knees. But I don't care! "Rock rock rock 'n' roll, rock 'n' roll high school"* Jump, kick, slam! Potted plants and statuettes vibrating to the music Raw vocal cords spilling out "I'm a teenaged lobotomy!" Sweat-drenched locks whipping my eyeballs into dripping redness One last thrust! One last valiant, ecstatic- "Gabba gabba we accept you we accept you one of us!" I pant, my throat is hot. My tension is released. But they want an encore.*Originally the quoted lines were:
Then I walked behind the pulpit and read my own selection.
We need one another when we mourn and would be comforted. We need one another when we are in trouble and afraid. We need one another when we are in despair, in temptation, and need to be recalled to our best selves again. We need one another when we would accomplish some great purpose, and cannot do it alone. We need one another in the hour of success, when we look for someone to share our triumphs. We need one another in the hour of defeat, when with encouragement we might endure, and stand again. We need one another when we come to die, and would have gentle hands prepare us for the journey. All our lives we are in need, and others are in need of us. The poet George Odell.My name is Bob Alberti and when I met Steve in 1975 I really needed him, because I had no other friends. My family had moved twice in five years, from Queens and then from New Jersey to Minnesota, and Steve's friendship was what helped me survive and grow. (I also had an awful crush on his sister Connie, but she never knew...)
I joined theater club in high school at Steve's insistence, and I made many friends including Tim Fay. Because of Steve my time in high school, and theater club in particular, was where I finally took root and bloomed.
There were a lot of special moments with Steve, like the time he snorted a Gummi Bear through his nose at lunch. Yes, Steve, you STILL haven't lived that one down. Or the time we were tear-gassed at an Alice Cooper concert, and Steve was so mad that he beat up a car. But there were other moments, too, like the night in his front yard when we watched, descending around the entire sky, the most phenomenal Northern Lights I will ever see. It was a magical moment.
I remember the night I was waiting for Steve when the phone rang. Driving to pick me up, he had blown not one but BOTH right-side tires on his car, and slid into a cornfield. He was calling me from the farmer's own phone. I raced over and picked him up, leaving his car in the corn for later, and we managed to get to St. Paul on time. When we met and shook hands with the actor Vincent Price there were still bits of cornhusk caught in Steve's hair, but he was ecstatic. It was an exciting moment for him.
Steve and I shared many automotive moments like that. He was with me when I used a Mazda RX-7 to knock down a telephone pole. And he was in the car when I spun a Ford Galaxie 500 into the guardrail and stopped, facing the wrong way in the fast lane of I-94 in downtown St. Paul.
Despite this record, in May he allowed me to drive him, his beloved spouse, and three friends up to Elk River to see a movie. Climbing into my car again after those accidents shows the kind of man Steve was. Yes, he was nuts.
But he was more than that. He was one of those rare friends you can rely on. He was a man whose integrity was so essential to his nature as to be almost overlooked. Without trying, he commanded that kind of integrity in return. Despite the fact that I had twice nearly killed him, he climbed into my car again. Steve offered me his trust again and again... and left it up to me whether I would disappoint him.
It goes without saying that we shall all miss Steve. But the challenge for us is to remember what he taught us so easily and so naturally: to show friendship towards one another without artifice; to give and expect integrity from one another; to accept one another; and most of all to appreciate one another.
The twenty-eight years I shared with Steve, my oldest friend, seem to have passed in only a moment. Whether we who remain have only a day more together, or another twenty-eight years, it will all seem the same in the end, a mere moment in time.
For the sake of our friend Steve, whose moment was all too brief, let us, who need one another so much, not squander our own moment together.
I liked it.
Finally, while looking over the mimeo of Steve's poetry, that Tanya handed me, I found another poem of his a couple pages further back.
Our family is like the solar system. Dad is Pluto. Farthest from the rest, and the coldest. My brother is Mercury, closest to mother Sun. My mother Sun. My elder sister is down to Earth no nonsense, very conventional. My younger sister, like Venus, is always after the boys. Mother, dear mother, is the Sun. She keeps us warm and is our light in the darkness. Me, I'm Saturn. I'm the oddball of the family. But I didn't "planet" that way.Some friends and I have scheduled a night at the local punk-rock hangout the Triple Rock in order to raise a glass to Steve. And that will be the final goodbye. And after that Steve will have been well and truly sent off, and life will go on. Without him.