A eulogy for Andrew Vaché
A year ago my friend Andrew died in a kayaking accident on Lake Michigan. His wife asked me to speak at his memorial. It was easily the greatest gift she could have given me. It gave me something to do that week. It forced me to sit down and write for an audience and with a deadline, which is the only way I can manage to write. It brought him to life for me and gave me something permanent to stand against the worst part of everything, which is the inevitable forgetting. Though I couldn’t deliver on it, I wrote it with Garrison Keillor’s soft, nostalgic story-telling cantor in mind. If you’ve ever listened to the closing parts of a long story on Prairie Home Companion, you’ll know what I had in mind.
Below is a version of the eulogy I delivered.
1. I was looking through my long texting history with Andrew and noticed a pattern. We liked to share things we were up to and the sort of thing I shared was sort of sad compared to what he sent me. For example I once sent him a picture of an iPhone stand I made out of scraps of the kinds of 2x4s that are meant to be concealed inside walls; On another day Andrew sent me a picture of a polished wooden serving bowl whose finish gleamed even through the photo's poor lighting. My wife has been asking me for wooden bowls for ten years. I saw a set of them once at Pier One; picked one up for a little bit, then put it down. They were made by robots in some foreign factory and I didn't buy them. Andrew spun wooden bowls for his wife with pieces of a black maple taken down in his front yard and possibly hewed with an axe he found at Second Chance on his way home from work one day. He turned it on a lathe, which he somehow owns, sanded it, and finished it. I like to think he planted that tree, too I can imagine him On a childhood vacation passing near Baltimore scattering fistfuls of assorted seeds to the wind —Violet, hydrangea, maple— from the back seat of his parents' Oldsmobile, Steve and Liz beside him, just because he liked the idea. His wife would have filled the bowl with things from their garden, themselves the bounty of some late night Andrew spent planting in early spring, Brightly alive and creating while the rest of us slept. 2. Andrew's areas of expertise were myriad: animal husbandry presenting fitting gifts to loved ones cleaning out drywall buckets in preparation for pickling food planing wood to invisible perfection listing properties of archival ink pointing a telescope into the heavens and finding distant stars in a black sky not sleeping. Andrew was a blend of characteristics and beliefs not commonly found together in a single person. He was a guy who could tell you minute details of different car models; Bore you, frankly, with how much he knew, Going on and on and on because your habit is to listen and politely nod. But then he would also help you disassemble the engine of your minivan, —whose designers put the spark plugs under the intake manifold (a term Andrew taught you) so that an otherwise routine repair threatens an $800 bill from the mechanic— Andrew would help you take apart your engine, over a complete Saturday Setting up, handing you all the right tools, (maybe putting the gasket on backwards, but also assuring you it didn't matter) While the day grew long and the sky grew dark and in the end it was night and your car was fixed and it only cost you parts. He was a guy who liked to fish, and drive a tractor, and ride his bike at 5:30 AM to your weekly coffees through the Baltimore streets, in spandex; a guy who didn't use gloves when he handled raw meat and then wiped his hands on a dry towel; who maybe needed to clean his fingernails a bit more, and organize his garage, and write down his passwords. But also a guy who spoke a bit of French, was a gourmet cook, a tenor, with the voice of a cherub, a pacifist, and who sung the praises of the bidet he bought and tried to convince you to convert your own toilet basically every time you got together. Andrew was a free man full of action and valor in equal balance. I will say that one trait Andrew did not get was the ability to tell stories that are short. No one is perfect. 3. I'm a Christian whose belief is more held than felt; that is I think Christianity is beautiful and true but my experience of it is mostly in the mind —I am religious, but not spiritual, as someone has put it— which is why although I can consider the promise that I will one day see my brother again, this is a remote hope that so far hasn't provided much in the way of daily comfort against the black hole his tragic death has left. Through these groanings though I guess I know to cling to what we have but cannot see and wait for it with patience. In the meantime Every morning this week I've waked into a world where I wish only that he weren't gone. Andrew was my close friend and I am grieving our loss. I am going to miss him so much.