Matthew Juser

Matthew Stephen Juser 10/4/1981 - 3/11/2010

Matthew lived with a smirk on his face. Life and the situations it brought him were just amusing enough to keep him interested. He rarely took anything so seriously that he couldn’t make a joke, or at least give you that smirk. If you took yourself too seriously, he knew the right buttons to push in the right order to knock you down a few pegs. Trust me, I know how to take myself very seriously, and Matthew never failed to put me in my place. The whole time, he’d be wearing that smirk that said, “Watch me take you for a ride.”

To say he did what he enjoyed would be unfair. He lived the life he believed in, and never deviated from what had always been a clear path. His tastes were simple: to disassemble anything he could lay his hands on to see how it worked. That might keep him interested long enough to put it back together.

Cars always fascinated Matthew. Before he could drive, he rode go carts, and before that, he’d do laps around the back yard on the riding-mower. I don’t know how he came across cars as quickly as he did, and if I asked him to give me a ride home from work, I never knew if he’d show up in the Blazer, the Corvette, or the Geo Metro spray-painted camouflage with KC lights on the roll-bar and the snow plow he removed from our grandfather’s tractor. Another time, he hooked a PA to his conversion van and drove around my neighborhood yelling at people until he found my apartment building.

I wouldn’t be surprised if he repaired every car in the parking lot. He probably considered your issue not worth charging for and fixed it with the spare parts in his garage. Only a few days before he went in the hospital, we were in his driveway with only his legs dangling from the innards of my car, while I stood by holding the flashlight. When I asked if I should leave it for the weekend because it was almost dark, he waved the notion away and said it would take him fifteen minutes. As it was, he could barely move his left hand, but was not about to let the unruly motor get the best of me.

Matthew never liked to give up. When we fought as kids, he was always willing to go one step further. No matter how much I beat him up, he’d still say one more thing, push me one more time, or toss something unpleasant from across the yard. We got along later, but until his last day, he was never willing to give in to anything.

While Matthew suffered from cancer, he was never a victim of his disease. He refused to lay down and wait. The morning after his first surgery I found him already in his chair on his own power complaining the nurses made him stay in his room. He was released a few days later and couldn’t wait two weeks before he was inside a car again. He was only allowed under the hood at first, but it didn’t take long before he was in the driver’s seat as well.

Who will remind us now that the world isn’t so serious, and things will always be better if you take a step back to laugh? He wouldn’t be happy to see us getting so worked up. I was always the showman, while Matthew was content to tinker and disassemble. He decorated his home with lamps made of crank shafts, alternators laid out delicately on a blanket like an archaeological find, and door panels hung on the walls of his garage as speakers for the radio that turned on with the light switch. When he was bored with the layout of his livingroom, he had an entertainment center set up in his camper. Another was set up in the back of the conversion van should he decide he wanted to stop driving and play video games for a while. When I asked him why he would build these things, he’d look at me like he couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t. Then he’d shake his head and walk away with that smirk.

That’s how I knew he was still there. The first night he went to the hospital, we all huddled around his cot waiting for the spell to pass and the doctors to laugh and say it was nothing. The doctors were asking him questions to try and determine what was happening in his head. They were baseline questions, like ‘What year is it,’ ‘Who is the President,’ and ‘What is your name.’ The different doctors were asking the same questions, and then the same doctors were asking the same questions again, and Matthew was clearly growing frustrated. He gave me that smirk. He couldn’t remember our names, or get out more than a few words, but he still had the smirk that said, “Watch me take you for a ride.” I knew no matter what happened, Matthew was still in there. Matthew was defiant to his disease, and he fought it valiantly to the very end.

Matthew was brave, and those who saw him in the last month saw how hard he fought to be here with us today. That is not how he would want us to remember him. He lived life with everything he had, and he touched a lot of people along the way. He was taken from us far too early, and he knew we’d never be able to take care of ourselves without him. Who will be there to drop everything when we’re stranded on the side of the road? Matthew was harmonious with the world around him, and always worked to lift the people with him. He made the world a better place, and we’re all going to think of him often. He was gentle, and kind, and funny, and confident, and reliable, and he’s the only person I’ve ever met that could fart with such wit it should be considered an art from. You know he’d be angry if we went through all this without giving him that credit.

Matthew would want us to remember him at his best, because that is how he would remember us. He wouldn’t like to see us carrying on like this. With so many people that haven’t seen each other in so long, we should be having a party. That’s what Matthew would want, and he’d be the one to drive us all home at the end. For two years this day has hung over us like a sword. Now that it’s here, he is free to be the Matthew we remember again. He can fix your car again, or take you for a ride on his snowmobile again, summer or winter. He can embarrass you with the contraption he assembled and claimed was a car. He can get detention for excessive flatulence again, or start a food fight in the cafeteria again. He is free to poke your pets until they bite him again, and he is free to drive your old car into a tree again, forward and backward, to see how much damage it will take before it stops running. He is free to remodel your rooms or rewire your entertainment center. We’re free remember him however we need to make this easier. We won’t have Matthew to help us, so we’ll have to figure it out on our own. Look for the humor, and everything will be okay. In the end, after all the fight and struggle were over, Matthew had that smirk on his face. “Watch me take you for a ride.”