The stream of humanity absorbs each of us upon our birth, makes room in exact proportion to what we are able and willing to fulfill, then closes behind us upon our passing with hardly a discernible ripple as its courses through time. But as with the fireflies, this is an illusion of perspective. Viewed more closely, from the community and family level, such coming and goings are anything but placid events. In the end each of our individual worlds and our lives are defined by our interrelationships one to the other; each of us a piece in the puzzle of family, community, society and the overarching stream of humanity.
When a new one arrives among us, lives are necessarily redefined; relationships and roles in family, community, and society are altered. In stasis, there are no voids in the tapestry of human society; everyone is connected, and each occupies a unique position with unique connections to those around them. As joyful as it is to make room for a new arrival in our midst, to watch the roles and interconnection change; parents to grandparents, adults to parents, children to brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts and as time passes, to watch friendships develop and love relationships sprout, it is as painful and more to experience the passing of one among us. Each such event involves the unknitting of all that has been knitted with that person, a sudden rift in the fabric of our individual community, society, our families, our lives; in the case of someone like Paul Harrison, in our souls.
Paul was a person of great heart, deep emotion - capable of great love. He was in no way reserved in his approach to others. He went through life with few inhibitions and an invitation to friendship worn on his sleeve. If you did not like him, then there was another on the backside that you could consider - complete with instructions to some place else you could go.
All that he was sprang from his deeply spiritual nature. I don’t know that I have ever known a more emotional and spiritual man. It is what fascinated me most about him and where I have drawn instruction and insight from him. I am not finished growing under Paul’s influence, I don’t think I ever will be. His lessons of the spirit are not easy to absorb; they require cultivation, study, and practice.
I learned from Paul that many of us, myself included, go through life too focused upon the objective material world around us. Paul’s senses were more tuned to the spiritual dimensions of life. Where many of us focus upon the outward presence of an individual and engage in conversation on the literal level, Paul would see the spirit; he would plunge past the superficial and size up the inner being, motives, and feelings. He would read the unstated in what was said, the true motive behind every gesture. Compared to Paul, in matters of the human heart and spirit, I came to realize I was relatively blind.
I will allow myself one “for instance” of his ability to read people, one that perhaps some will feel inappropriate to the venue, but one cannot not honestly eulogize Paul if the censor is allowed to stand too close by. It was an office Christmas party… I had broken from the conversations going on around me and was admiring Becky from half across the room, my back to Paul. My study lasted only a few moments and the only gesture he could have seen other than my direction of focus was a small rocking on the balls of my feet. When I turned 180 degrees, he was smiling at me from the opposite side of the room. I approached him with the question “What?”, to which he replied that I had been in amorous contemplation of Becky. Needless to say, it was true.
I have always been grateful that Paul did not verbalize all my thoughts. In sharing that story, so personal in nature in this venue, I am reflecting on Paul and his influence on me. Paul knew that to get personal, you had to be personal – doing so opens a broader band of communication.
His power to read his fellow humans so well, on the emotional level, made him the best courtroom lawyer I have ever known. I mean that sincerely. He was not charismatic as he shuffled about the courtroom, Columbo-like, with his jacket hanging off him as if ill-placed on a closet hanger, but he was tuned to every thought of every juror, the witness, and the judge. He took more than a handful of difficult cases to the courthouse and came back with amazing verdicts —verdicts beyond what I would have thought possible.
Paul’s approach to the law reflected his spiritual nature as is well reflected in what he said of Winslow Drummond upon his passing.
"Winslow loved being a lawyer. To say he had a passion for the practice of the law is but a mere attempt to verbalize that which is more the spirit than the mind. From the decorum in the courtroom to the discovery depositions, down to his flawless dictation, he was the very essence of professionalism. He was a faithful servant of Lady Justice."
Paul’s spiritual nature defined his relationships with others. When Paul formed a relationship, he would do so by finding some aspect of that person's soul which he could identify with, and he would then reach in and meld his to it in that area and then build from there. I would sometimes go to his office as an escape from the stress of the litigator’s life. It was so easy for him to speak of the personal. We would talk about our wives and children – he loved his so very much – and worshiped Eileen on so many levels. He would reflect upon Henry or his relationship with his father, and probe and explore the same subjects with me. It was like sitting beside a warm hearth.
He developed deep relationships easily and beyond that which might superficially be apparent and beyond what time and circumstance might seemingly merit or even allow.
More than a few lawyers, whose only significant initial interaction with Paul was across the table in litigation, formed real friendships with him. You will look around today and see many people whose primary connection with Paul was business in origin, but which became personal in nature.
Of course, Paul did not find everyone worthy of his friendship and could and would reject people just as energetically as he adopted others on direct and emotional terms. He was an accomplished law student, serving on the law journal. Accordingly, in his senior year, when it came time for the larger firms to interview the more promising graduates, Paul was among them. Paul was married to Eileen at the time, and Judge Henry Woods was thus his father-in-law. One of the interviewers, a bow-tied partner in an establishment firm, asked Paul how he thought he would respond if someone else in the firm were to say something derogatory about his father-in-law or a ruling he might have made. Paul said, “Well, I guess I would just have to tell him he could kiss my rosie …”
The other side of the invitation I referred to is that he already knew where he was going to work, anyway.
Paul’s ability and willingness to sport and play inside the human mind and emotions, his propensity toward and ability to tell stories, often involving matters most would not speak upon, at least not directly or as graphically as Paul was wont to do, made him a great source of entertainment. In his sphere of society, Paul was the cinnamon on the toast, the blueberries in the muffin, the jalapeno in the cornbread. He could and would entertain on any topic; his real and/or imagined romantic conquests of yore, the weather – oh the weather – why listen to the forecast if you had Paul at hand, his garden where he cultivated not only his flowers but his spirit, a wedding he attended, anything could be the source of great rye humor and an opportunity to explore one another on uncommonly intimate grounds – even amongst people he had never meet before in his life. He was not afraid of being human, or of seeming human; putting on airs never crossed his mind.
I am reminded of a story that I am not sure why is told in a Jewish context, except that it seems to sharpen the credibility of the point of humor. It involves a new rabbi in a small community who is called upon to preside over a funeral of someone he did not know. After completing the formal rites, he called upon someone from the small group gathered around the grave to say something about Isaac, and no one spoke. So he urged again not to be bashful, someone say something about Isaac. Still no response. So finally he says we are not leaving here until someone says something nice about Isac, and finally a small old man steps forward and says, “Well, to tell you the truth, his brother was worse”.
Now I bet the thought flashed through more than one of your minds that you could say that about Paul, “his brother was worse” depending upon what worse is, such as perhaps a bawdy sense of humor, an obsession with the weather or a near pathological propensity to entertain. The entire Harrison clan seems gifted with a colorful and gay spirit that may be related to their sharp minds and their practical, earthy view of life that allows them to revel in being human. It is a family that is a gift to know.
I mentioned Paul’s garden. His garden literally had a sacred element to it. It is where he communed with his soul and renewed his spirit. He took such great pride and pleasure from it and effused that fact so that if he brought you a tomato (he mostly grew flowers), you felt as if he had just placed an offering on your altar. It was quite unnerving and I came to feel obliged to immediately go and cut and eat the whole thing in the office kitchen and make over it, least I make offense by forgetting to immediately take it home as I did the first time I got one, or worse still, take it home and forget to say how you ate it and how wonderful it was. You ate one of Paul’s tomatoes with the reverence you might show for communion, or you would not see another for a while, and if you really liked a tomato, that was a terrible loss indeed.
All virtues have a vice on their reverse side; all strength comes with its own weaknesses. Paul’s propensity to make relationships deep and emotional and his sensitivity to the actions and thoughts of those around him meant that he lived in a turbulent world as relates to the heart and spirit, and the smallest slight or criticism from someone important to him would evoke much emotional energy. This is something I think he struggled to control, but without complete success.
You could only really hurt Paul if he liked you, and the more he did, the easier it was to do harm. His father’s death was quickly followed by his other father’s – Henry Woods, who was his professional mentor and idol. Paul’s very soul drew on Henry’s for inspiration. These two deaths in close succession left Paul deeply wounded, something he never completely recovered from. It was as if those connections between his souls and theirs was such that their parting tore too much of his own away.
As it was his habit to make such attachments, it means that each of us now is experiencing in some measure the pain that such a firm binding of souls can inflict upon separation. While we mourn our loss now, in the mending, we must try to reweave the tear so as to incorporate some of what has been lost to us. We can do that by reflecting upon and remembering what was good and right and wise and loving in Paul Harrison, as we re-knit and fill in the void.
