What I don't like about the Rule of Three is after two deaths how do you know the third won't be your own?

    So far for 2011 it's been my former business partner Diane, and my mentor and friend Joe Ellin from college.  Diane's death came as an unsuspected blow.  Her husband has been ill for a long time and she took him to the hospital.  After seeing to it he was being well cared for she stood by his bed holding his hand and dropped dead herself.  She had more than a few illnesses, but still it came as a shock, yet imagine what it did to her husband?

     Joe came into my life when I was scrapping garbage on disposal number nine on the morning shift at the dorm.  In the misty dawn of Kalamazoo, Mi. I could see one light on in the faculty offices below.  I saw a furry head every morning pouring over his books and taking notes.  I figured whoever he was he was worth studying with, so one day stopped by and found he was a professor of philosophy, specializing in ethics, no less.  I signed up for his next class.

      It was an adventure I'll never forgot.  It  sometimes took Joe longer to arrange the lectern on the desk than deliver the lecture.  (I'm only partly kidding.)  He said it had something to do with "a poor sense of spacial relations."  Some folks might call that clumsy, not Joe.

      When he launched into the lecture, he was a sight to behold.  He'd pace as he spoke--faster than any man I'd ever heard speak, channeling philosophers long dead, reconstituting their minds in minute detail in a Brooklyn accent laced with Yale.  He  challenged you every step of the way both to keep up and dare speak yourself. 

        Joseph Ellin, Philosopher, Patrick Stewart, Actor, Ben Sen, Dreamer

                                                          Who's Next?                                                       

     Within five minutes, I knew I was in the presence of one of the greatest teachers I'd ever know and while most of the other students would twist and turn their heads I was cast under his spell.  He leaped on the blackboard every so often like a wild cat, breaking the chalk, scattering the erasers, writing in a form not unlike hieroglyphics, but it didn't matter.

     I took every class he had to offer.  When the anti-war movement began and I became a leader he became an advisor so our friendship blossomed.  The other was Lynwood Bartley who led the teacher's union at Western Michigan University for many years.  Joe always wore a bushy beard, his "trademark," and looked like the miniaturized reincarnation of Karl Marx (though he wasn't a Marxist);  Lyn couldn't make up his mind whether to wear a beard, so was always shaving it and letting it grow.

     One day we had a meeting at Lyn's place.  Joe entered the room like he was looking for a microphone to see if we were being wire tapped.  He kept searching until Lyn finally asked:  "What are you looking for?"

      Joe said, "I wonder where you keep all the old beards."

       We stayed in touch through all the years.  Whenever he and his wife Nancy came to town we did a night out.  She was a perfect match.  If we went to a play in the discussion afterwards if you missed something, or didn't interpret it correctly she was on you like he was on the blackboard.  She died less than a year ago--a smoker--the victim of lung cancer who didn't give it up until they took her cigarettes away when she entered the hospice.

      Just before the holidays, Joe emailed to say he was coming to town.  I made arrangements for the theatre and dinner.  He'd been fighting leukemia a few years and had a couple of bouts with pneumonia.  He didn't exactly say he expected it was his last visit, but when he almost fell in the street a few times I got the message.  I asked, "Anything you want to do special?"

     "Yeah, let's go to Macy's."

     "Is there something you want to look at?"

     "The rugs."

     "You need a rug?"

      "No, I just want to look at them."

       We went to Macy's.  He liked the old fashioned Persian designs, nothing new or flashy.  When the salesperson ran over and dropped the price to about half, a look of deep contentment passed over him.  His faith had been restored, his spirits uplifted, and when he finally said to the woman, "I'll think it over" it was time to go.  His mission had been accomplished.

       It was easily one of the greatest honors of my life that he called me his friend.  Joe'd be the very last to believe in the Rule of Three.  He didn't believe in God because he didn't have the "gift."  I never much believed in "The Rule" either, but its happened so many times now and my belief in reason shaken in so many ways, I now feel it's naive not to take it seriously--hardly the most cogent argument but somehow reassuring--like getting a good deal on a rug. 

      Reason has its limits and our need to have some sense of control is as natural to the species as eating and drinking.  Irony replaced logic a long time ago as my personal perspective.  How else do you explain a holy man who was an atheist and those whose "God" is more a cause for their vengeance than a protection from it?

     I don't think Joe would give me an "F" for that paper since it's a matter of belief and belief is what we make of it.  He taught me that.  At least, once there are three deaths the suspense is over for a little while.  Goodbye dear Joe, Goodbye dear Diane.  Forgive me, but I hope I don't have to see you again too soon.

        To Jane, David and Julie

What we love well remains, the rest is dross.

_{Photo credits: Mercedes Arnao}