Eulogy for Dr. Jorge

Dr. Jorge Mariano Cury died on Saturday and this is my attempt to commemorate his life.

I have had 3 "fathers" in my life:

A hopeless alcoholic we escaped from when I was 7;

A functioning but abusive alcoholic we lived with for the rest of my childhood;

and Dr. Jorge Cury, the only real father I have ever known.

I won a scholarship from AFS to be an exchange student in 1969, through some miracle where a screening committee somehow didn't see how messed up my home life actually was; or else they did see, and thought I deserved rescue.

I was sent to Birigui, a then-small town 700 miles inland from Sao Paulo in Brazil, to live for a year. It was like going to the end of the world, completely different in every way from the environment I had grown up in. A huge challenge with a truly life changing and wonderful outcome, thanks in part to Dr. Jorge, my AFS father.

Dr. Jorge was a real Dad in the family: hard working, steady, and interested in our lives. As we sat around the dining table, he would ask how things were going. Believe it or not, this was a new experience for me - someone you could count on to be there, to be the same, and to care about you the same, every single day.

Dr. Jorge had a degree in Pharmacology and a little business called "Laboratorio de Analises Clinicas" around the corner from our house. Among other things, he ran tests for the local hospital. My Brazilian Mom, Dona Iracema, would help him there in the afternoons when she was finished teaching elementary school. He also sometimes assisted with anaesthesia drugs for surgeries. When he learned I was interested in biology and had volunteered in a hospital, he got me in to watch an actual operation, standing right next to the surgeon (imagine that ever happening here!).

I learned from the local English teacher (the only person I could communicate with in the first month or so) that my placement in this family was in part an attempt to help Dr. Jorge handle the grief from the sudden and terrible accidental death of a 17-year-old nephew who was like his own son. At the time she told me this, she was trying (I think) to get me to realize how important my behavior was, since I was going through an adolescent "I hate this, I'm homesick, get me out of here" phase in those initial weeks. It kind of made things worse at the time (now I got to have guilt on top of everything) but now, looking back, I can only hope that with all my early teenage angst, my presence did end up being some help to him.

I always felt like he was a friend to me. He treated me like an equal, never like the dumbo American I usually felt in those early days. He never talked down to me, even though my Portuguese was initially a kind of dictionary-wielding pidgin based on French. I really appreciated his basic dignity, intelligence, and attention.

I last saw Dr. Jorge 11 years ago when I returned for a visit. I remember two things he said then: that he wished he'd had the opportunity to see the USA but didn't think it was going to happen in this lifetime; and that "that Paula Jones thing is just somebody setting Clinton up, don't you think?".

Dr. Jorge, I will miss you, and I am so sorry I didn't get to say goodbye.