MONDAY 20 November 2023
“You must write his obituary. The world must remember him; otherwise, there’ll be no trace of him,” Steve’s neighbor demanded. That last part was not true; however, I understood what he meant. He repeated his command several times. Each time he pressed me to write it, dread nauseated me. “I’m afraid to write one,” I confessed.
The prospect of writing an obituary terrified me, for one reason, because the word itself was too blunt, matter of fact for what needed to be graceful and eloquent. Part of “obituary’s” etymological root—“a record of death”—lacked those qualities. He lived, he worked, he died. The end. An obituary seemedtoo objective. An obituary seemed to record a resume-like statement of accomplishments and positions. An obituary was lifeless. Of course, Steve was dead, but, if I were to compose an “obituary,” I needed a format that fit his personality. An obituary seemed too constraining.
Despite his medical bipolar disease, Steve burst with energy—when his depression didn’t plunge him deep in the abyss—and his enthusiasm, his joy of learning (and teaching), his loyalty to his closest friends—these attributes and many more needed to written about. Moreover, how could I ever capture who Steve Ressler was in a single obituary? In a mere paragraph? Or even 1,000 words? HE was larger than life, and no amount of poetry, philosophy, or tenderness could illustrate who he was. I would need an entire lifetime to chronicle who Steve Ressler was. An eulogy—its etymology reveals what I felt was needed: “good words;” I needed to celebrate him, keeping his memory alive, not to bury Steve in a record of death. I preferred not to say the last word about Steve. When he died, I couldn’t write either an obituary or eulogy. I wasn’t in denial; nonetheless, I wasn’t ready to compose one. And the stress of being told to write one NOW was worse than writer’s block. Grief’s abyss was so dark and deafening that I couldn’t remind myself about Steve’s goodness and life. IF I were to write one, I would need time.
Drafting an obituary also scared me because doing so would force me to accept how he died. Although Steve died during the first wave of Covid, he did not die from the virus. Nonetheless, his neighbors detected death’s scent in the air emanating from behind his apartment door. Soon, New York City authorities arrived before his door, and, upon entering, they discovered Steve had been dead for several weeks. The date: Friday 13 November 2020.
What sickened me most about Steve’s passing was its indignity. He withered away. During the last five years of his life, he increasingly isolated himself. His bipolar condition worsened. He felt ashamed that he needed Prozac to temper his wild mood swings. I begged him to change psychiatrists, or at the very least, to try different, more modern medications. During those last five years, I became more attuned when he shut down himself: not answering his phone, not returning voice messages, not attending holiday dinners. I saw my daily phone calls to him as lifelines, demonstrating to him that I was attentive to, interested in his welfare. We had an unstated agreement: if he had sunk to the bottom of his depression, I should give him a certain amount of time for him to swim back to the surface. How much time depended upon my own tolerance for uncertainty. After three weeks, I would arrive unannounced, jolting him out of his mental stupor. I would take him grocery shopping, anywhere to revive his spirit. The ebb and flow of depression and mania depleted him. He needed help that required better professional intervention than what he was receiving. I questioned whether what I was doing was indeed enough.
The first wave of Covid overwhelmed New York, and the shutdown, isolation, and fear were the tipping points for Steve’s final submersion into the deep end of the abyss. Other circumstances at the time reduced him to immobility and hopelessness. Starving because he hadn’t eaten in weeks—probably months—he lost weight. He always was a husky man, and now his large clothes hung on him. He looked malnourished. His eyes revealed shadows and ghosts from an abyss he stared far too long into. He was terrified. He was starving himself to death. I bit my lip to stop myself from crying. I needed to be strong for Steve. He confessed that his life was over. He repeated: “It’s over” incessantly. Hearing him echo his self-condemnation crushed me. Here was my teacher, my friend, my family, and he was deteriorating before me. Earlier, when Steve began to drown in the deep end of the abyss, I still managed to rescue him. This time was different. He didn’t want to be saved, and his surrender to oblivion horrified me. I couldn’t let him dissolve into nothingness.
While listening to his “It’s over” chant, I looked around his apartment. A metaphysical darkness seemed to hover all around. The atmosphere in his apartment was choking me. I was only there for some time, but I felt as if I were suffocating, too. He had been breathing in this oppressive air for months. Convinced there was nothing to be done about his situation, he was gone after two months. When he died, a haunting insight overwhelmed me. Teaching, writing, and publishing about Melville’s Bartleby character was challenging enough, and certainly doing so was one thing. Living with and trying to rescue one in real life was another. Steve had become like Bartleby in so many ways. Bartleby was a literary character who preferred not to live, a man who frustrated any attempt at empathy or help. His suffering was incomprehensible. His soul sickness was misunderstood. And the Lawyer, Bartleby’s employer who slowly and painfully recognizes Bartleby’s ordeal too late, feels he let down Bartleby. No matter how much the Lawyer tried to help him—and at first, the Lawyer had selfish motivations, ones that truly did not respect or help Bartleby, and, only later, when it was too late to save Bartleby from suicide—the Lawyer couldn’t do anything for Bartleby. My revelation hurt because I felt like the Lawyer in the story who felt somehow responsible for Bartleby’s death alone in the city prison because he had betrayed Bartleby by not doing enough. I saw Steve as my Bartleby. The healthcare system failed him, the mental healthcare system let him down, and society looked away from him. And I join with the Lawyer in Melville’s short story and repeat the Lawyer’s last words—with some modification—“Ah Steve! Ah humanity!”
And I wanted to protect Steve from these indignities: dying alone, isolated, defeated, and crushed. How could I write an obituary? I worried that doing so would humiliate him. Three years have taught me that like Melville who argued that we need to know about Bartleby’s soul sickness if we are to understand Bartleby’s humanity, I, too realized that I need to show you Steve’s soul sickness in order to appreciate his humanity. He didn’t need to die that way, I told myself. I needed three years to re-evaluate Melville’s Lawyer; and I needed three years to understand that Steve did live and thrive. His bipolar condition was his immortal enemy; however, he fought against it valiantly.
To understand Steve, I need to shed light on his depression. These past three years since his death have shown me that he was more than his illness. He may have had Bartleby-like traits, but he, too, possessed Falstaff-like ones. He looked and acted like that Shakespearean part. His laughter, humor, dedication, intensity, whimsicality—these qualities made Steve, Steve. He loved to write letters and send postcards. Anyone who has received his limericks knows how funny, clever, and occasionally mischievous his rhymes could be. Unfortunately, during those final weeks of Steve’s existence and even after Steve’s death, I couldn’t remind myself of the greatness of Steve. Thankfully, those memories are stronger, more profound than his depression.
The last time I saw him alive, I immediately contacted city adult services. Witnessing Steve’s abject vulnerability and fear, I felt broken, unable to do anything anymore for a man who did so much for me. Despite assurances that they would help him, Covid complicated how much city services could do for him. I held too much faith that they could rescue him. Their failure was my failure. He deserved more.
When the city morgue phoned me, I didn’t recognize the number. Listening to the voicemail, I felt as though torturers were ripping me apart. Although the medical examiner’s representative did not specify that Steve Ressler was dead and that he was in the city morgue, I sensed that the reason they were calling me was that he was now dead. I could not breathe. He was seventy-nine years old, but he could have lived longer.
Calling the city morgue was the second hardest thing I have done in my life; the first, most devastating thing I did was to bury my own twins. I tormented myself with the question: how did the city agency get my number? Since I requested city services to help Steve, my contact information was on record. I most likely wouldn’t have known that Steve was no longer alive. I would have appeared at his door, and the yellow Police tape barring entry would have been unbearable to see. The spiritual torturers ripping me apart now lashed upon me relentlessly. Speaking with the city morgue’s representative, I received confirmation that Steve was no longer with us. What shattered me was their request that I identify him. I emailed them photographs of Steve. My pictures weren’t enough. I needed to confirm his identity by viewing their photographs of Steve. They warned me that his face had become discolored from the buildup of fluids. That caveat smashed my already broken self. For several nights thereafter, all I saw in my mind’s eye was Steve’s face, purple and green from the decomposing blood.
How could I write an obituary? How could I write about Steve’s demeaning ending? He deserved better. And my rage, grief, and sadness forbade me from writing anything. Feeling as though I had betrayed him, I shouldn’t have dared write anything about Steve. “You must write an obituary for Steve. He loved you,” the voice of Steve’s neighbor echoed in my head. That demand only served to make me feel more guilty, depressed, and unworthy. I didn’t need to be reminded that Steve was a cherished and beloved friend, someone who became my family. Steve was the guiding force who inspired and mentored me to become a literature professor. Steve was my advisor who helped transform a “dumb Pollock”—he always hated when I referred myself as one—into an intellectual. Steve was the energy that fueled my children to become academically successful. Steve was the motivator for my wife, children, and me to travel the world—damn the cost; treasure each moment alive and live now, not later, Steve would demand. Steve was family. And his loss was devastating. Really, how could I write anything?
A year had passed. Indeed, I wrote nothing. How could I now write the Katyn book? Hearing Steve’s voice in my head, I listened: “Dan, you need to fucking finish the Katyn book.” I always loved his bluntness. I needed to finish the book for him. Reviewing my draft, I sensed I couldn’t pick up from where I last worked on. I wasn’t starting from the beginning; however, I felt as though I were starting from the beginning. At that moment, I chose to work on a biography of Józef Czapski, one of the almost four hundred Polish officers who the Soviet NKVD didn’t murder during the Katyn Massacre. Only recently did I come to realize that this Czapski biography I was working on was my unconscious mind preparing me to write this eulogy for Steve. Czapski’s life was complicated, too, and going through multiple drafts composing this life history on Czapski, I taught myself how to write this one ultimately for Steve.