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January 25, 2006

Christopher B. Crumlish 1960-2006

Christopher Crumlish died on January 15. He was 45 years old. The picture was taken on December 25th, a couple of days before he was admitted to the hospital, with heart failure, on December 28, 2005.

For the past several years, he taught English and writing at Montgomery County Community College. He was also a member of the Chestnut Hill Bocce Club. He survived cancer discovered at the age of 16, which cost him his leg. However, through his determination and example, he proved an inspiration to a number of people over the years. He is a wonderful brother, and I will miss him. What follows is the eulogy I gave at his memorial service.
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Over the past three weeks, my sister Nancy and I met with a lot of doctors and nurses and heart specialists. To better treat Chris, they needed to know as much as possible about him. The more they asked us about him, though, the more I realized how much there was about my brother that I did not know, and, perhaps, how much I did not fully appreciate. Each of you have your own relationship with him. Each of you hold a part of his story. I want to tell you one or two things about him, and about his last three weeks with us.

Invariably, when speaking to the doctors, one of them would make the comment that “Chris has had a very hard life.” I have heard this from many people, and have thought about it a lot over the past three weeks. It is true that, in his short life, Chris overcame more challenges than most of us will ever have to think about. I am not sure, though, that Chris would agree that his life was necessarily “hard.” I rarely heard him complain and he took his physical or financial setbacks in stride. He also refused to consider himself handicapped, as any of you know who – like me – made the mistake of suggesting that he apply for a handicapped sticker and received the full force of his considerable rhetorical skills in response.

Chris is known for a lot of things. Two that come to mind are his love of literature and film – of which his knowledge was both encyclopedic and insightful. But these were not ends in themselves, to him. They were a means of sharing ideas and forming lasting relationships with people. I have a friend in Tennessee, who only met Chris a couple of times. Whenever I had a party and Chris was there, though, my friend sought him out. That is the kind of impression he made. You could see the sheer joy he brought to himself and others through any discussion of Nabokov, Dickens, Monty Python or some obscure film. He also loved to teach, and to teach the kind of students he was teaching. It wasn’t so much about the money as the work.

Chris loved his family, and showed it in a number of ways, including little things, like the Christmas ornaments he gave each of us, every year, for so long that I no longer remember when he started that tradition.

Chris was fiercely independent and, well, somewhat stubborn and tenacious. That is meant as a compliment. I remember when he was sixteen, in the hospital with cancer. His prognosis was grim, but he told me he wasn’t going to die. Several months later, after he was released from the hospital and was still very weak, I was home from college and my mother gave me some news. Chris had convinced her to go for a walk with him. They walked around our full block in Chestnut Hill. I believe they went up to Evergreen Avenue, as well, and didn’t take the shortcut through the back alley. What my mother saw and knew – what we all came to see and know - was this: Chris had a will to be independent and self reliant and overcome whatever obstacles were put in his way. If you doubt this, remember some of those road trips he took, often unaccompanied, through the Appalachian Mountains and elsewhere, with little to no money and a car of questionable reliability. He drove armed with maps, a pile of guide books, and a triple A card. He always got where he was going, and got back home safely.

When Chris was admitted to the hospital on December 28, we believed that it was just this determination to overcome any obstacle that would pull him through. He had done it before. We knew that he hated the hospital, and we hoped that the approach of a new semester would motivate him to recover. As we learned last spring when he broke his shoulder, Chris was not above getting out and about - against the always very fine advice of his family - in order to get back to school and his teaching. He had promises to keep, and responsibilities. He hated to be forced to stay in one place, immobile. So we knew that he would hate being in the hospital, would not want to miss the first day, would worry about it and, if able, check himself out no matter what we said. We expected to have to argue and bully him into resting. But the human body can only take so much.

Chris has always been an inspiration to me, especially in the way he overcame and helped others overcome so many challenges. I respected and appreciated the depth of his thinking and the power of his mind. We didn’t always agree and I still wish that he had taken my advice on a couple of things. But those are details. Through Chris, I have learned more about myself in these last few weeks than I ever expected and he continues to inspire me. But that is what he always did – teach and inspire. I am a better person for having known him.

On the Monday before Chris died, we were able to speak with him, in a way. We showed him the Saint Christopher medal from a friend at the Bocce Club, and told him the names of many of the people who had written or called to wish him well. I know that he understood us, because he shook his head and responded to your names and was also able to tell us – by squeezing our hands as we went through the alphabet to spell out each letter - that he would like us to read to him. I like the fact that it was through a book – something that he loved – that we know that he heard your names and understood and knew how much he was loved. I know he is sorry that he could not thank each of you personally for your friendship and love – could not provide you his own Oscar acceptance speech upon receiving a lifetime achievement award.

When I think back over the past three weeks, and remember the calls and letters and I look around and see all the friends – many of whom are strangers to me – that have told me about Chris and prayed for his recovery, I am deeply moved and gratified. But I am also sad, because I can’t help but wonder what Chris might have done had he been given a longer life. I will miss him, but I knew him. So did each of you. We are the lucky ones. We each hold a memory of Chris within us.
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Posted by apc at January 25, 2006 10:19 PM

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Posted by: friend at February 4, 2006 10:23 AM

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