In Memoriam: Nicholas Gervas Blakely

Over the weekend my mother's old friend Gervas died after a long illness--leukemia and all its attendant heroic treatments. It was no surprise, but it's made us all very sad. The two of them met when my mom was about the age that I am now, when they were reluctantly teaching Spanish (him) and English (her) at Duchess Community College in Poughkeepsie. Gervas' nasty sense of humor was a lasting influence on my mom and therefore on me; he's the reason I think it's okay to make fun of people if they're mean--the glass houses irony of which is not lost on me. In fact, the Quintessential Gervas Story is by far too offensive to appear on this blog, but I'll tell you sometime if you really want to know. Gervas was my brother's godfather, too; my parents loaded us up with extra godparents, which was a good strategy as about 50% of them were out of our lives before we were 10. Gervas, however, stuck, and was in the deepest sense family to us. Except the dogs, whom he detested. He and my mom would have to be separated at dinner parties to prevent their giggling together all night. Over the years Typhoid Yente would try to fix him up with her various girlfriends, resulting in some of the goriest breakups of her career. But he prized independence and was often solitary (when not womanizing), so it is in some ways appropriate that in the end Gervas died alone. In 2001 he was given two years, so in fact he lived twice as long as expected. But I'm going to miss him a lot and I'm blue.