The heartbreak of sudden death faced off against an opposite concept, the elegance of a brief life uncommonly well lived, and they cleaved, almost desperately, to each other on a sweltering Sunday afternoon when hundreds of persons bade a spectacular, heavily weighted farewell to Joey Lutz at Hillside Memorial Park.
An outpouring of unrelenting, almost wailing, grief marked the broadly drawn Jewish funeral service, led in an understated manner by Rabbi Seth Rosen, himself emotionally overcome several times.
At 12 noon, fully an hour before the afternoon-long service was to begin, mourners started filing into the chapel. They were met by large video screens on either side, capturing the magically supreme fulfillment that he achieved on all of his days.
He inspired, he taught and he led — perhaps those are the three principal pillars of Joey Lutz’s golden legacy.
So Many Were Touched
Perhaps what astonished strangers most was the irreversibly ingrained impact that both the youthful and the fully mature Mr. Lutz brought to ever circle he entered or created.
Judaism was his constant companion. The Moveable Minyan, an egalitarian Jewish group of which he was an influential member, led by Pini Herman, was crucial in assisting the Lutz family in leading them through the labyrinth of foreign government bureaucracy in recovering the bringing home their son’s remains.
Mr. Lutz was a huge factor in Jewish-Muslim interfaith dialogue in this town, and 80 of them collected at Dockweiler Beach last Monday night to honor their pal Joey.
One week after the charismatic Mr. Lutz perished in the turbulent waters off a beach in Panama, the eerie thud of his passing, a month before his 26th birthday, still was settling in for those who were not related but felt as if they were.
A much-loved English teacher at Santa Monica High School the past 3 years, the son of Freda and Stuart Lutz of Culver City, led a colorful, intensely personal, widely open life of staggering breadth.
A Personality Who Shaped Others
His sister, a chorus of shocked classmates from his U.C. Santa Cruz days, students and teachers from the Samohi campus, friends in the arts, boys grown to men who traced their friendship either from Hebrew School days or Middle School or Culver City High School, all seemed to agree that if Mr. Lutz’s life had to end, his professional role as a teacher was a grudgingly conceded proper denouement.
Numbed by grief, Shira Lutz, Joey’s younger sister, by the mere act of reading her thoughts she had typed out in the middle of the night before the funeral — 3:14 in the morning — married anguish with heart-clutching drama merely by stepping to the podium and achingly relating her innermost feelings.
Surely tears stained every face inside the chapel and out.
“I never expected to not have him in my life,” she said. “He was supposed to see me as I go off and live my dreams. He was supposed to be smiling at me at my wedding one day. He was supposed to have his own wedding in a beautiful garden, and have a wife, and our kids would be close as cousins one day.
“He was supposed to be alive, and I have a hard time believing in a God who would take all of visions of him away from me.
I have a hard time believing in a God who would inflict so much pain on me and my family.
“Don’t tell me I am selfish for wanting him back in this world.
“He is not supposed to be dead. The word ‘dead’ is so horrifying to me, but yet so real, too real, and it is going to take a long time for me to be at peace with a world that has robbed me of a lifetime with my brother.”
Outside of the celebrity orbit, he may have positively influenced more concentric circles of persons, spanning all ages, than any 25-year-old in America.
From childhood, according to all testimony, his life was dedicated to gently teaching all with whom he came into contact to concentrate on and eventually digest the exquisite richness and fertility available to all who search.
The brightest light into Mr. Lutz’s soul shined on his final Father’s Day message to his beloved father, whom he addressed throughout his life as Abba, father in Hebrew.
Mr. Herman read only a 280-word portion:
“Abba:
“It’s hard for me to encapsulate the evolution of our relationship.
“I know that no other person in my life has impacted me the way you have.
“No one else has had as huge of an impact on my character and the way I perceive myself and my life, and the way I have worked to construct meaning.
“I love your sunny outlook on life. I love your constant contentedness. I love your solid presence and sense of humor.
“I never worry when you are around. I know that Abba will take care of everything.
“These are things I endeavor to borrow from you to emulate.
“I don’t like traditional models of masculinity — baseball, beer or machismo.
“You have given me such a precious gift: A male role model who is loving and unafraid to sing or be loved or be hugged when he kisses children.
“I pattern everything on you, and it makes me so happy to do it.
“I am always filled with joy when the sun shines, and I think that is due to you as well.
“I love you so much, Abba. You mean the world to me, and I need you in my life for as long as possible.
“I want you to take care of my children and my grandchildren.
“Our relationship is precious beyond diamonds, and the times we spent together in my childhood are the foundation for a present and a future that I am proud of and would trade for nothing.
“My most cherished parts are yours, and there is no way I can ever fully express the love and gratitude I feel for that.
“Happy Father’s Day, Abba. Joey.”
A parent’s ultimate dream. A grieving parent’s quintessential nightmare until his own life ends.
As Judaism teaches, all else is commentary.
