There are Worse Things than A Wrong Number at Three O’Clock in the Morning

It’s hard to imagine how he did it, but in order to avoid burdening his family with difficult end of life decisions that would have ensued from his prolonged illness, my good friend Dan Scharfman died last night. As his undergraduate room mate and friend of 35 years put it, “A gentleman to the end.” Without higher order cognitive functions, Dan was still more thoughtful that anyone I’ve ever met or am likely to meet. It would have been hard for his family to determine when to take Dan off life support. So he spared them the trouble. He left us peacefully last night, January 20th, 2013.

At 55 years of age.

A good man. Gone too soon.

It should be noted however, that just as he was the most thoughtful in life, he was the strongest even in death. Suffering from a 8.2 Heart attack (OK, I made up that earthquake stuff; I don’t know enough about heart attacks to come up with a better metaphor,) he was still a rare and exquisite physical specimen. Breathing machine? No thank you. Dan was pushing the lung machine. The machine didn’t have a setting high enough for Scharfman. “It goes to 11”? Whatever. Dan needed a 12. Dan ran ultra-marathons the way some men walk from their living rooms to their refrigerators. Effortlessly. He was a beast.

Dan never met a stranger; Dan didn’t have an enemy. Dan’s life was evoking consensus. As a school board member, he brought together disparate factions and helped them to common ground. If he thought your side of an argument was stupid—He must have thought some sides of some arguments were stupid—he never let on. You could tell him that two plus two was five and he would look at you like he were concentrating, giving it some thought. No condescension. Dan was smarter than I and faster than I. But he never pointed out the obvious. Mile after mile, race after race, he never left me although he could have, easily. (Except for the infamous “Mile 17” in the New Jersey Marathon, when, after sucking down a few dozen chocolate chip granola bars, Dan toddled off leaving Carter and me in the proverbial dust. “Dust”? No wait a minute, we were in New Jersey. Scharfman left us in the muck.) He never said, “What’s the matter, Altshuler? Isn’t that a turtle pissing on your leg?” Many a man with less skill than Dan would look down the pyramid to build himself up. Dan only compared himself to the (very few) runners faster than he. Doubtless, there is a metaphor for the rest of his life here somewhere as well.

Oh, and a word about running. (You didn’t think you were going to get through this posting without a word or two on running?) More than any other athletic endeavor, running isn’t about ability. Running is about training. Running isn’t about what you’re born with; running is about how hard you’re willing to work, day after day, year after year. Scharfman was all about hard work. As a result of his phenomenal work ethic, he could run without stopping for half a day. If I were presumptuous enough to have a regret about what Dan might have left undone, I might suggest that he would have liked, in the fullness of time, to have had some grandchildren with whom he could have cuddled and to whom he could have read One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish. And he was planning to run a hundred miler this year. Nice.

Great Dad. Great Friend. We won’t see his like again.

Dan spent every summer backpacking through the Montana wilderness with his family. His son, Jacob, and his daughter, Rachel, both had wicked back country skills. But Dan could have and would have carried them and their back packs up and down the mountains. That’s how much he loved being with his family in the outdoors. The photos of Dan and his kids standing on some random western mountain are a tribute to a man’s love of his family. He’s smiling so hard, you have to wonder if his head is going to split in half. “ We’ve been eating peanut butter, jelly and gravel sandwiches for six days. But I’m with my kids!” I also have some photographs of Dan and Rachel—just a father daughter trip this time. In these pictures there is just a tent and the two people. Everything else is white because THEY ARE CAMPING IN A BLIZZARD IN NEW ENGLAND IN FEBRUARY. At the risk of stating the obvious, ten degrees above zero, visibility zero, ten miles from the nearest road, every inch of clothing and gear wet and frozen? NOT A PROBLEM. He’s with his beloved daughter. He could be on the surface of the moon and it wouldn’t matter. The smile said it all: “I’m with my daughter; we’re camping. What could possibly be any better?”

Too good for this world.

My poor words can hardly begin to describe the life cut short. Dan’s legacy certainly includes the friends with whom he put in so many glorious miles. And frozen, unpleasant, bitterly cold miles as well. What’s the difference, really, if you think about it? Every mile is a good mile if the company, conversation and camaraderie are good.

Dan could laugh at himself, never bristled at how much I teased him. When he was running for selectman (“City Council” for you non-Bostonians) he was interviewed on TV. “Tell us something about yourself,” the Moderator began. Dan’s opponent—giving the question some thought–mentioned how much he liked sports. Responding to the same question, Dan quoted the first 12 lines of “Antigone.” In Ancient Greek. I suspect he could have quoted many more than the first 12 lines. Also in Ancient Greek. When we teased him—“What were you going after? The pretentious demographic?”—he just smiled. Somebody needs to know “Antigone” and be able to quote it on TV in Ancient Greek. Why not Dan?

Dan knew no music more recent than 1750.

Really. We were 30 or 40 miles out in some race recently and I quoted some Simon and Garfunkle. He was appreciative but admitted that modern music–which he defined as anything post Mozart–held little allure. There was nothing pretentious about his statement. Perhaps he was acknowledging that we are each allotted only so much time and that we have to make hard choices about how to spend it.

Dan had this horrible heart attack last Tuesday and was transported by the paramedics to the hospital. How beloved was “The Mayor of Belmont”? Upon hearing the news that Dan was indisposed, a neighbor of his, a 75 year-old woman, shoveled the snow from Dan’s sidewalk. Everybody loved this guy.

Prodigious ability.

Lorna, Dan, and I trotting around some lake up in Connecticut last April in a 50 kilometer event. After three or four hours of running, conversation lagged as fatigue reared its ugly leg. Dan picked up the ball by telling the “Three Samurai Joke.” For over seven miles. What an extraordinary gift. As each of our running buddies will attest, you can’t focus on the pain in your ham-string if your head is on fire from focusing on the description of the arcane runes on the kimono of the second samurai. But extrapolating to the larger picture, that was Scharfman in miniature. All he ever did was think of someone else. All he did in life was to try to make everybody who came into contact with him a little better, a little happier.

The Next Miles

Going forward. I’m not sure exactly how to honor Dan’s memory. He did a lot of what he wanted to do in 55 short years. He lived well and I like to think he didn’t have too many things left undone. He lived his life as he wanted to, helping everybody he knew at work, at home and in the community. Sure, he would have wanted more camping trips with his kids and more 50-milers, but it’s not like he was waiting for tomorrow. So for myself, I guess I’m going to try to be a little bit of a better person. I guess I’ll try to suffer fools a little more gladly. I’ll try to listen a little more openly to opinions in which I find little merit. For darn sure I’m going to tell the The Three Samurai Joke at every opportunity.

Dan would have liked that, don’t you think?

What’s the take-away here for the few of us who had the pleasure to travel around the country hurling ourselves into the void with this good man and for the many of my gracious readers who did not have the opportunity to share a mile with this gracious guy? Easy.

What do you want your last words to your children to be? Given that you don’t know which words are going to be your last?

“Do your homework then clean your room” just doesn’t hold a candle to “I love you for who you are, not what you do.” I think my buddy Dan would would have agreed.

Warmly,

David

Friend of Daniel Scharfman, December 31, 1957 – January 20, 2013
Gentleman. Scholar.
Loving husband and father.
Boston Qualifier.
Devoted Friend.