I met John in February 1996 during my first business trip to Moscow, when another friend brought him along to dinner at Starlight Diner, my first of many meals there (plenty of which would be with John). I was based in NY at the time, and when he moved to NY a few months later we quickly became close friends, and stayed that way over the years, no matter where one of us happened to be living. We were almost the same age (he was born eight months after me), and we had both studied law and worked overseas a lot, and we would talk about life, work, fun, family, and ups and downs. I'm really going to miss being able to call him up and just chat.
There are so many great memories. Trips to Izmailova Market on Sunday afternoons. The time John found an obscure rug store in Moscow where we both bought small antique Azeri rugs; back home he discovered that his smelled of "cow urine", as he put it, and had it cleaned a few times, and then put it on the floor of his NY apartment. A fantastic week biking in Provence in May 1997, followed by a few days at the beach near Barcelona. A week in Puerto Vallarta in early 2005. Kidding him about the wine glass he dropped in my kitchen in London that somehow shattered into a thousand peices that flew across the floor of the living room. The millenium New Year's party at his apartment in New York -- a group of friends sat in his living room and had drinks and toasted the new millenium , and then went out to a bar after. Of course, no expat spoke Russian as well as John and I took some perverse pleasure when my tenuous command of Russian grammar would cause him such consternation, and sometimes provoke a spontaneous grammar lesson.
I enjoyed John's great sense of humor, and his keen intellect and knowledge of history. One day, after hearing him yet again use just the right word to make a point, it struck me that he had the widest active vocabulary of anyone I had ever known. He was an instinctively generous person. "You are always welcome here," I remember him saying, and so many of us stayed in his apartment on CPW that sometimes it seemed like a sleepover party . When he visited me in Kiev a few years ago I had asked him to try to find a particular art book for me in Moscow; it was sold out and he knew I would be disapointed, so he brought me another large beautiful art book as a gift.
John is gone too soon, and I'm going to miss my terrific friend, confidant, and fun companion for dinner and adventures, but I am fortunate to have known him and will always have so many great memories. He was a real family person, and loved his daughers so much; please know that we are all thinking of you.
As I sit here thinking about what to write about my brother, who is somehow not here anymore, I find myself bombarded, not by sad memories, but by hysterical ones. Images of John throughout the years doing ridiculous things- like sitting on the love seat of the Vorel's swingset with a towel wrapped on his head, chanting like a swammi- whatever a swammi was (I was only 4 or 5 at the time) he got the swing going so high that the whole swing set tipped over- to the roar of laughter and the cheers of all the neighborhood kids!
-There was the summer that Jaws came out. We were on the cape when we saw it at a drive in; it was the scariest thing I had ever seen, and I had nightmares all night long.We spent the entire next day at the beach.(jaws was filmed off martha's vineyard) John would always hold my foot in his palm and toss me up and out into the water. That day, right as I was about to hit the water, he yelled SHARK!!!!!!and he started swimming/running for shore. I couldn't go back into the ocean for 25 years!I got him back a few years ago though, with a chain saw and his beautiful cherry bed...
My brother taught me how to read, how to wiggle my ears, how to flair my nostrils , and how to whistle; All the most important things a kid needs to know how to do to survive in this world- but most important, he taught me how to laugh. He could make me laugh anywhere anytime about anything. He would wait until I took a drink so it would come out my nose, then I would choke and laugh even harder.
It came so easily to him, the gift of the ridiculous- he could take anything and make it funny, the more bizarre the better. And accents- oh my God- he could do any accent in the world!
To this day, I can not hear an english accent without thinking of John doing a Monty Python skit. (would you like a budgy?)
I remember him giving me piggy back rides when I was to tired to walk .
I remember him reading me stories at night before I went to sleep.
I remember him wearing a big giant overcoat and hiding me inside it then sneaking in to our mother's hospital room when I was 6 and too young to visit her.
I remember the day he tried to teach me how to spell my name- it was to long and I got mad, but I learned how to spell J-O-H-N that day instead.He liked that.
I hope he knew how lucky I felt to have him as my brother, I hope he knew how much I loved him.
My first memories of you are soft and warm and beautiful.
I held your finger tight minutes after I was born, meeting you for the first time.
I watched fireworks from the back of a car you drove at two years old. Perhaps my first memory.
We built block towers to the moon when I was three.
You played with Anna and I, we never laughed harder.
Memories abound. The lasting impression you leave on me is that of a man who had more love within him than he knew what to do with. The most gifted mind I have, and will ever have the pleasure of encountering.
I love you, I love you, I love you.
