Eulogy for Phil

I've had some requests to post on this blog the eulogy I gave for Phil at his memorial service. I will try to do that now, but I should preface this by saying that I am not sure what I actually said. I had something prepared, but as I said at the memorial service, in tribute to Phil's general disdain for precise planning and his embrace of the spontaneous, I tried not to read what I had written. But this should at least be an approximate version of what I said:

For the past 21 and 1/2 years -- about half my life -- Phil Cardi was my best friend, or, as I used to refer to him to other people, "my best friend in the whole world." I know that I'm not the only person for whom he played that role. And that is great. I think it is a great measure of some one's success in life when so many people refer to him as their "best friend."

Ever since we moved in next door to each other in Beloff House at the University of Buckingham in January 1986, we clicked. I don't know that I can explain our friendship. We were quite different: I was a liberal Jewish vegetarian, the youngest of my family; he was a Republican, Catholic, carnivore, and the eldest of the Cardi brood.

But I know what drew me to Phil almost right away and what maintained our friendship over these many years, even though we rarely ever lived on the same place -- once we graduated from Lehigh, we were scattered across the world, I was in New jersey, he was in Delaware, I was in North Carolina, he was in Pittsburgh, I was in Alaska, he was in New York, I was in San Francisco, he was in Chicago, I was in India, he was in London.

What drew me to Phil was that he was the most decent person I have ever known. He had an inner kindness, a basic goodness, and a spot-on ethic that were so much a part of who he was. I rarely heard Phil talk unkindly of another person, and even on those rare occasions when he did, he was not vindictive in any way or overly harsh in his judgments.

And what I always envied about Phil was his almost perfect balance between gravity and levity. He was a serous and intelligent person and, oddly, a really goofy one at the same time.

But above and beyond everything, Phil was a great best friend. I could probably tell a thousand stories about him -- and some of them probably not appropriately told in church (talk to me after the service). We traveled a lot together -- all around Europe, to Alaska with Elissa and Sarah, to Hawaii awith Elissa and my wife Wendy, to Monterey with all four kids in tow. And Phil was an idiosyncratic traveler - -you couldn't plan too much, you definitely could not backtrack (you'd have to find different ways to come and go someplace).

But I have one story that for me illustrates best what a great friend he was. When my mother died suddenly a few years back -- and as an aside, I should note that my Mom loved Phil as if he were her own son, to a Jewish Mother he was the biggest mensch (sorry for the Yiddish in teh church) in whole world , she loved him so much she tossed all etiquette aside and invited herself to his wedding, and Phil, being the nice guy that he is said "of course" -- Anyway, when my Mom died, I couldn't reach Phil. He and Elissa had finished up living in London and were traveling around Europe. So I called Barbara and told her my sad news and asked her to tell Phil. When Phil heard, he called me. He was In London. I was in San Francisco. This was before unlimited international calling plans. After the standard condolensces I told him that it was a really expensive call and we could talk more when they got back to the US. But he said, "Let's talk as long as you need to talk." And we did. We taked about mothers, wives, being grown-ups. I'm sure we talked about whether my Eagles would win a Super Bowl before his Dolphins won their next one. And when it was over and we truly said "goodbye," I looked at my phone. I very clearly remember what it said -- 1:47. We had talked for an hour and forty seven minutes from across the world -- because he knew that I needed that.

Perhaps the best thing Phil ever did was marry Elissa , a nice liberal Jewish girl. And although adding wives to the mix can sometimes weaken male friendships, it was not that way at all with us. I felt even closer to Phil when the four of us, and then the eight of us, were all together than I did when it was just the two of us.

I have, unfortunately, had enough exerpience in losing loved ones that I know it's not productive to try to make sense of death. Nor am I usually inclined to try to find a divine plan in life's mysteries. But over the past few days, I can't help but think that maybe God just need a really good guy up there, a really decent person.

Phil -- my best friend in the whole world: thank you for everything. I will miss you dearly.