I have always thought of my friend Csaba (pronounced CHAH-buh) as the childhood best friend I never had.  We met in my twenties when I was teaching in Budapest.  I would say it was love at first sight but it wasn't love, exactly.  It was more a sense of absolute certainty that this person would be in my life for the rest of it. 

I had never felt that before, and had no reason to think it then.  I was in Hungary on a perennially expired Visa (something well-behaved Americans could get away with back then), was in the throes of my wanderlust, and really had literally just seen him across a room. 

It wasn't a romantic connection, although the sense of immediate recognition — frisson! as my old friend Madam von Kereszteny would say — made it seem like one at first.  And we did explore that with not entirely unpleasant but decidedly awkward results. 

But no, we were destined for something at least as delightful but much more durable than romantic love: passionate friendship.  What I found in Csaba was a friend with whom I could talk about anything and everything, from lice to literature, completely without pretension. 

Intelligence without pretension is a rare and wonderful thing. It may be the fact that Csaba was a science guy to start — his first degree (Hungarians, like a lot of Europeans, like to collect lots of 'em) was in biology — but ended up teaching literature.  A native curiosity about nature (not least human nature) combined with the critical skills of a scientist aimed at literature — he had a built-in bullshit detector. 

He was never much concerned with impressing anyone with his knowledge — when he shares it (and he doesn't suffer fools, I have to say) he does so out of a real generosity of spirit and a delight in engaging with ideas.  If something rings false to him he doesn't waste time on it.  If something is true, he revels and regales. 

His friendship has been one of the enduring delights of my life on earth (as much as he would roll his eyes at my saying so). 

It has been 5 years since I've seen him in the flesh, but we skype regularly, and our sessions often last into the wee hours (at least the wee hours on his end — they have six on us) and we continue to share our loves and losses, the latest of which is his long-time partner Attila's father's death.

"He died very peacefully," Csaba told me.  They were both there, and Csaba washed down the body with warm soap and water, while Attila chose an outfit for the burial.

Washing the body to prepare it for burial is a beautiful ritual I think has rather fallen out of favor in our culture.  I know that when my father died we immediately called the hospice nurse.  No one in my family was comfortable handling the body.  It was like we were afraid we'd break it.  Even though it was already obviously broken, it seemed to need an expert hand.

When I called Csaba shortly after my father's death early in the morning on a Sunday in April, I remember him asking who had washed the body.  I was sitting in the garage to get away from the hustle and bustle of the extended family that had come to clean and console.  We had just trundled the body off in a mini van with two absolutely Dickensian undertakers who reeked of cigarettes and rotgut coffee.

His body had lain there for four or five hours, suddenly alien, shrinking like a fruit that's drying out.  When I think of the body now it seems something mysterious, inscrutable, a fetish almost.  An object, like I said, that needed special tending.  Like savages who come across a relic from some forgotten religion, we were overtaken by a kind of superstition — fearing what might happen if we handled it.

And so I think we missed a rite of affection in our affliction.  An opportunity to forgive the body. We had all come to so despise that cancer-ravaged corpse that had held my father captive.  But I know now that there is no worthier object of our pity than the body in pain. 

Back on skype, Csaba announced: "we dressed him in one of your ties."

When I moved back to the States in '03 I left various and sundry material possessions I'd accumulated over seven years in boxes in the boys' attic with instructions to put it to good use, should a good use present itself.  This seemed like one, although not exactly the kind I had in mind.

"It was the sort of gold one," he told me, adding archly: "Attila's father had always been a bit of a gigolo."

I was honored, of course, and oddly deeply touched.  A spare tie put to good use. And high praise from a well-loved friend.