Rabbi Marc Boone Fitzerman
February 16, 1999
BRIAN SWEET
SHMU' AYL PINCHAS BEN SHIMON VE-RUCHEL
There is a kind of darkness-thick and mysterious - in which all of us are required to live our lives. It brings the aching hurt, the wounded soul, the necessary losses of real life. It's the turning point between before and after; the demarcation where adulthood begins.
You suddenly come to understand that happiness hangs by a slender thread; that we will not all survive this chaotic tumble. Yet into the midst of all of this come the men and women whose strength and goodness is a pillar of fire. They are luminous souls, bright with generosity, who hold out a hand in the midst of struggle; whose embrace is all the security we can hope for. Brian Sweet was such a man, and it would be easy to imagine that his light has been extinguished. The paradox is that it radiates still and promises warmth and comfort with the fullness of time.
And it pulses from every part of his life. We come to this moment from many directions - the hundred worlds in which Brian was central, shaping the experience of everyone he touched. His public life was an ongoing marvel, a shapely expression of his multitudinous gifts. It grew from the soil of his most basic nature. I'm charmed, with you, to think of a circle of high school students, who assembled themselves as Brian's merry band. Holly remembers Brian's Days. There would be a car-full of friends, with Brian driving, and an assumption that whenever you were with Brian Sweet, marvelous things were bound to happen. They would be strange and wonderful, and Brian would get you there and back - a performance on Greenwood, a walk up a mountain. We are talking about Brian in his first flush of personhood: curious, intuitive, adventurous, protective - a child who led, not by force but by enthusiasm; a young man who spoke through energy and instinct.
And it is precisely those qualities that led him forward into life. I want us to focus on the world of a photojournalist: it is always cold; there is always too much equipment; and the film is due before the events have run their course. And yet it was into this world that Brian poured himself. With Holly, always -linked fully, inevitably he brought wit and intelligence into everything he touched. The raw materials could be the definition of failure: humdrum expectations, the wrong end of the lobster shift. But Brian would invent love songs to breakfast in Oklahoma. There would be poetry about omelets, hymns to hash browns - and pictures to bring every gritty reality to life.
Darrell, his mentor, discounts his influence on Brian and says that he came to him fully formed. By the time they knew each other, there was nothing left to teach; Brian had the toolbox of an accomplished professional. Brian, I'm sure, would contest this judgment. He was enormously humble, radically open to the force and sting of other people's opinions. It was all in the name of learning his craft, a restless need to improve and refine. He believed that he could learn from every person, every circumstance; that it took a kind of professional vulnerability to get to the center of one's art.
And it was wedded to Brian's towering persistence. It is the very heart of Holly's impression of Brian's work. In her memory it is always the end of the day. The crew is exhausted, the light is fading, and everything calls out a message about home and rest. And suddenly Brian has a surge of energy, a second wind that takes him one step beyond. Disheveled in dress, he is filming again, re-ordering a sequence, getting things down with greater subtlety and refinement. I do not know what Brian learned from others, but I trust Darrell's judgment about the work of his colleague: Brian's work at the camera was seamless and true. It had flow and integrity; it was of a single piece. It was as musical as every other part of his life.
And it had, triumphantly, Brian's democracy of spirit: a tender love for the great and the small; an effortless ability to cross the borders of experience to embrace the wholeness and totality of other souls. It is no mystery to me that Brian was a cameraman. His great round eyes, luminous with humanity, even when he had difficulty forming words, took in the whole of his surroundings, the plural worlds of his life. It is significant to me that Brian was a favorite with snack shop ladies in the corridors of the Capitol building, with judges and governors, with the fixtures of fame. And it's the snack shop ladies that tell the real story about a darling boy who became a darling man and who gave other people the great gift of his attention and his interest. It made everything possible, every transition in his life; every shift upwards from setback to achievement. He could see the proud canine inside the matted coat. He could see the humanity inside the darkest cloak; the kernel of decency inside the corrupted spirit. And he brought it to life as part of his vision of the world.
Because the world itself was merely an extension of his family, the circle in which Brian experienced love and wholeness. A sister and a brother, months apart, grow up into the world twinned in spirit and affection. Two parts of a whole with an enormous love that sustained both of them in the chaos and tumult of life. Carol would say that she and Rosalie, and Sy and Bob, Holly's parents everyone - gave themselves to Brian because it was an honor to do so; that his limitless giving-pure, unconditional; the sweet, undemanding generosity of his soul -shaped the culture and tone of an entire family. There arc other sons who call their mothers every day. But none who expressed the joyfulness of that bond in purer accents of mature understanding; who loved both his parents with fullness and heart.
And finally, forever, there is Brian and Holly. It is a story of thunderclap love, of stops and starts, of tumultuous partings and joyful reunion. They were born in the same hospital a mere nine days apart. Brian used to say that he spotted Holly early, that he rolled over in his crib and said "Hey, Baby, you're for me." But what finally began in the crowded back seats of high school moved inevitably towards union, mutuality, devotion; a heroic, eighteen-year bond of selfless care. Only Holly could tell this story as it must ultimately be framed - every fresh detail, every marvelous revelation - the whole marked by passion and quickness and smarts; scrupulous honesty, spirit and enthusiasm - the very tone of her relationship with Brian. Brian Sweet was that rarity: the most perfect husband. Holly Sweet inevitably returned the favor. I speak of a woman who went out of Egypt in a single night, to defend her man, to bring him comfort and light.
Which brings us, at last, to the story now ending. Brian and his family endured a siege of the soul. Hour by hour, day by day. It was a lesson in the peculiar force of chance; of one singled out for extraordinary trial. Yet it would be wrong to imagine this as a story of failure. Everyone remembers the way Brian shared his news without fear or hesitation, as causally as the weather. "Hi Mom, its Brian. How are you feeling? Not to worry, I'm in the hospital. I've had a couple of seizures. I think I have a brain tumor. What's new with you7" He was enormously funny. He was wildly right about everything, including the absurd web of certainties in which he became increasingly entangled. Facing the inevitable pronouncements of doom, he asked his doctor if he could afford to buy green bananas. He was fearless and resilient and he made himself go forward. He allowed himself to feel the power of his losses, to cry out, to stand naked against the storm of his illness. He did everything with the combination of vulnerability and nerve that gave the rest of his life such stature and rightness.
And the result is that he became the place to which all rivers run, where opposition is resolved, where there is no right or wrong, where doubt gives way to a deep throbbing certainty, where a multitude of questions have the same powerful answer, where all is held in sanctified balance. His life became a place of tolerance and unanimity. Brian is at peace and he brought peace to others in the midst of being unfairly denied. It is a mark of his character, a measure of God's own holiness, that Brian achieved this luminous paradox.
Along with all of you, I bless Brian's memory. The irony of this moment is that we are all at a threshold. Today is the very first day of Adar. Our tradition considers it the most joyous of months. It is the month of Purim, the month of deliverance; of costumes and celebration and endless gratitude. The mighty were brought low and the humble elevated. The Rabbis say that" mi-shenichnas Adar," from the moment that Adar makes its triumphant entrance, "marbim be-simcha," we seek every occasion for joy. I ask that our grief be tempered with this certainty: that the spirit of a man, worthy and fine, lives forever in the memory of his joy.
Let us all say: amayn, amayn.
