by Andrew J. Cohen
Delivered at the funeral of Melvin I. Cohen,
who passed away July 13, 2006 due to complications of PKD
July 16, 2006
In recent years, my Uncle Mel was a lot smaller than he used to be. He lost a lot of weight, as we all know. As he ebbed physically, it's too easy to forget just how large this man truly was. He had an outsized personality, a giant sense of humor and enormous heart.
To me, he was, and will always be, simply tremendous.
Let me tell you just how tremendous.
One of my very first memories of my uncle was during a visit when I wasn't more than five or six years old. We were visiting a rocky shore on Long Island. At the base of a lighthouse stood a wall of huge boulders. My uncle bounded from rock to rock and a few of us followed him. As we crept tenuously closer to the water, my uncle suddenly grabbed me in his arms and jerked me toward the crashing surf. He jokingly acted like he was about to leap into the water taking me along with him.
He yelled: "Andrew!" he said, "We're going out to sea! We're going out to sea!"
Yes, my uncle had a tremendous mouth. He was more directly outspoken than my father. He was even louder than my father—which is saying something. My father can be pretty loud in a lecture hall.
In his younger days, he was much larger than his three brothers. He could be a bit of a bully. His younger brothers told me once that as kids they were sometimes even afraid of him.
As an adult, he told me fantastic stories about his days in high school. He was a cut up and sometimes it got him into trouble. He once got suspended for mouthing off at a teacher.
In college, he apparently drank large quantities of beer. It sounded like he had a tremendous time. One of the best times of his life he said. His fraternity ZBT even awarded him a special fireman's hat to wear It was in honor, he said, of being, well, "tremendous."
His tremendousness was particularly useful when dealing with difficult retail clerks. When I visited, I'd hear stories. Aunt Linda would tell us, "he did it again, Andrew. He did it again." They messed up the order at the restaurant and he let them have it."
In short—if you'll pardon the expression—my uncle had balls. He wasn't afraid to express his opinion. While in his younger days he could be an insufferable tease, by the time I knew him, he had mellowed and matured into simply a wonderfully funny and warm person. He helped me learn to laugh at myself. He was still direct, sure, but tender and sensitive too. You just felt good being around him. You could not help but love his bold and confident manner.
I was a high school student during the time of his kidney transplant. He spent a month in the hospital recovering, and I would visit with him after school. One day I found him reading a strange book. There he was, in his hospital gown reading "Misery" by Stephen King. The plot, as you know, involves a man who finds himself under the brutal care of a sadistic nurse. There's only one word for that sort of attitude: Tremendous.
But even more tremendous was the manner in which he faced seeming insurmountable hurdles over the years. These were often awful times. But when I'd visit with him, you couldn't help but admire how he sized it all up and faced it straight on. He was in remarkably good spirits much of the time—at least as good a spirit as one could ever ask of anyone.
It was hard in recent years to see how his body could not keep up with his outsized personality. But even now, I take comfort in the fact that his supersized spirit lives on.
Somewhere right now, I'm sure, he's sitting on a tremendous cruise ship, staring into a tremendous sunset, and enjoying at tremendous glass of beer. Perhaps he is telling a joke in that loud voice of his. I don't know exactly what he's saying, but whatever it is, his voice is tremendous. I'm sure that if we listen carefully, we will hear him.
Note: Andrew is the son of Howard, Melvin's twin brother.
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