Stunning

He’d probably be embarrassed to know it, but one of my favorite memories of Braňo is of him dancing at his class’ stužková.

Not dancing formally with one of the fifth-year girls while parents and coworkers and other students looked on; dancing like he meant it to “1-2-3-4” by Feist, from a CD he’d burned specially for the event.  See, during my third year Braňo somehow got roped into being the class teacher (akin to a homeroom teacher) for 5A.  Despite his reluctance, I’m sure he performed his duties to the best of his abilities.  I’m even more sure that his students, from that class and from all of the other ones he taught, held his intellect in the highest esteem. 

How could they not?  Everyone who knew him for more than a few minutes had to.  Braňo was one of the smartest people I’ve ever known, if not the smartest, period.  When I knew him he was working on his dissertation for his PhD in philosophy, focusing on Jewish philosophers; at EGT he taught philosophy and English but only to the fourth and fifth years, because none of the younger students would have much of a hope of keeping up with him.  There were times when I couldn’t keep up with him when he was speaking my own language, which he perfected while working, if I recall correctly, on a fishing boat in the Pacific Northwest.  Sometimes the American teachers would take a look at the exercises he created for his English classes, and we were often hard-pressed to come up with the correct answers.  This one has got to be my favorite, since it combines the merciless incisiveness and humor that were so integral to his nature.

Please just don’t annoy me with more of your complaints!  I wish you had been born into a happier family.  You would have been given a better education and would have more confidence in yourself.  Now it’s too late.

He loved “South Park” and lived for bicycling.  He made us laugh, sometimes when we weren’t supposed to, and he was lazy about translating for us at staff meetings.  He encouraged us to be “casual” at all times, and used “stunning,” with varying levels of irony, to describe things awful to wonderful.  He brought a book along to his own class’ stužková, and took a break late in the evening to sit and read, or at least pretended to. 

I hate that he’s dead.  I hate that the way he died makes his death all the more believable.  I hate that there are people who never got the pleasure of meeting him, and that there are students who will never have the privilege of learning from him.  I hate that, at least in my opinion, the length of his life was not proportional to the gifts he’d been given, and that all the good he had the potential to do and to share will never come to pass.

But even in his too-short time he changed people’s lives.  The day he died my Facebook feed was filled with tributes from his former students, remembering him as the best teacher they’d ever had and thanking him for what he’d taught them.  If it were any of his colleagues I might doubt their sincerity, but he challenged his students and laughed with them and laughed at them and I know they learned from him, probably even more than they realize.

Here is another of my other favorite memories.  One day the class schedule had been messed about for some very Slovak, bureaucratic reason that hadn’t been explained to us well, if at all.  In roughly equal parts frustration and actual curiosity I asked no one in particular, “Why is this happening?”  Braňo looked up across the desk in the staff room and, face entirely straight, answered, “Because of sin.”  I think I laughed then, because I wrote it down on a sticky note; and in the years since, when I’ve felt most put-upon by events and asked that same question, I’ve thought of his response and it’s made me smile.  Though it’s hard to think of that answer now, I’m sure one day in the future I’ll properly appreciate it again.

While looking for the exercise I quoted above I found an outline that Braňo had given us of the speech he had to give at stužková.  I could easily quote the whole thing, but I think this is the best possible way to end a tribute to him: in his own words, with hope.

May you be lead by something more than just cleverness or even wisdom, may you be seized by something much better than morality, may you be broken by the joy coming from the thankfulness to the one, whose arms were and are strong and wide enough to carry us all, who came to give us an actual reason to be joyful, because he not only broke the coldness and indifference of the world around you, but also the coldness in you.