It’s odd how the greatest insight I can get into my grandfather’s perspective on life is through his jokes. Don’t get me wrong, he’s no reserved man, not even in his 90s. A lot of old people try to hide the countless tiny indignities — lost memories, the body’s failure to match the vigor of intentions, even innocuous wrinkles — with a wave of the hand or a sheepish smile.  

My grandfather, in his 90s, chose another way. He barreled through limitations: walking miles daily despite increasing joint pain; reading more and more books to reinforce his mind’s fortress; speaking constantly with strangers and friends. In suburban Wilmette, this old Soviet man with broken English and an eternal grey windbreaker was recognizable to four generations of neighbors. Every action was a clear, deliberate statement to old age: no thanks, I’m not done.

Like any good Soviet-educated person, my grandfather hid the deepest memories, thoughts and lessons in the unlikeliest places. And thus, the jokes. Take this one: a young Soviet graduate student with a tiny stipend and his mother to feed looks for work. Jobs are scarce; he has no luck until he checks at the zoo.  The director says, “Look, there’s no zookeeping work, but our orangutan just died. You know the USSR, they’ll send us another one in three years and it might not even be an orangutan. If you want, I’ll pay you to wear a costume and act like an ape.” Our hero agrees. A few weeks later, a lion finds its way into the ape enclosure. The student runs up a tree to escape, only to hear the lion growl: “Psst – what department are you in?”

I heard that joke when I was 13 and thought it was hilarious, silly, then hilarious again, long after I’d left Northwestern and completed grad school. Over the years, I realized that the real story here isn’t the silly setup or the punch-line or the Soviet experience or what we do to make ends meet. No, the point is that in nearly all our lives, we will suffer unfathomable ridicule and indignity, terrific blows to the ego as we attempt to provide for our loved ones. It’s not enough to brave those slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, the joke teaches us. No, to fulfill our responsibility, we must conquer indignity, provide for our loved ones, but make it seem as if it’s nothing. That was my grandfather’s lesson.

I don’t know how he did it, made it all look so easy. This man fought Nazis, found love with my grandmother as a Jew in Soviet, Islamic Azerbaijan. An engineer who designed five mass transit systems in the USSR, he worked in Detroit at age 65 as a handyman. He spoke little English back then, and earned almost no money, but he squirreled away enough to buy me chocolate, presenting it to me with magic tricks invented on the spot. He taught me math on the backs of clipped coupon books and smuggled a bicycle — a BICYCLE! — out of the Soviet Union in a standard-issue suitcase so I’d learn to ride. How did a 92-year-old man make being the rock of a family look so easy?

The answer was simple: For him, making it look easy was just part of the assignment because removing every bit of anxiety from every friend, colleague, and family member — that was his responsibility.

And so, when, one quiet evening three months ago, we learned he’d been hit by a careless driver on Green Bay Road just a mile north of Northwestern, we could only believe it when we learned he was walking back from the grocery because family was flying to Chicago the next day and he wanted his beef cutlets to be fresh. He didn’t tell us about his night walk, because it wouldn’t look easy, and we’d worry.  That was him; it fit the picture too much for it to be some mistake. And when he was gone, just half an hour later, as I held his bleeding hand, I realized the only thing that’s easy in life is the exit.  

This isn’t about depressing you, just as Chicago’s infamous winter draws close and you spend more time indoors and your parents tell you to call your grandparents. And while I’d love it if Northwestern students became champions of safe driving, this isn’t about that either. If it’s anything, it’s a Northwestern alum who loved his grandfather, saying that there are a lot of things I wish I could have made look easy.  Hopefully you’ll all be better, and I think you are.

And also, you should call your grandparents.

— Nick Naroditski (Weinberg ’09)