It has been almost a week since the shocking news that NBC political journalist Tim Russert had passed away . . .  58 years old . . .  which felt especially brutal for me because that was the age my mom was when she died so suddenly and unexpectedly.  (It will be 20 years ago this Thanksgiving.)   Much too soon.  Trevor mentioned at lunch today that when he got back to his apartment last Friday night from somewhere and only then learned the news, he found himself glued to the television set until 2:30 in the morning, engrossed in the coverage- in the parade of guests paying tribute to this highly admired figure in American political life.  Me, too – although I was engrossed that very afternoon –  watching the coverage on MSNBC.  Part of what made it so engrossing was that you had the sudden death of someone that so many people genuinely loved –  and the people remembering him were all people who know how to express themselves and who could, for all of their shock and grief, articulate what Tim Russert had meant to them and what the values they believed he exemplified.

What is especially fascinating about all this is how acutely so many of us grieved over this death. . .  someone who was in one sense a complete stranger – and yet who felt like a friend, at least in some ways.

I actually didn’t know him from his most important gig – Meet the Press, which I have never watched in my life.   (I’m at church, for pete’s sake.)  But I vividly remembered the many times he was a guest on the Today Show, offering his razor sharp perspective on all kinds of political matters with that irresistible combination of smarts and heart . . . heart and smarts.   And I also had the great pleasure of doing a phone interview with him for the morning show – speaking not about his first book, “Big Russ and Me,” but rather his second book:   “Wisdom of our Fathers,” a collection of a few of the tens of thousands of letters he received after his first book was published.  I could speak with him for only 9 minutes and 45 seconds and it seemed like a paltry amount of time then . . .  but now I feel fortunate indeed to have had that brief interaction with the man. (You can hear that interview on my Listen page.)

Friday – and into Saturday and even Sunday, I found it hard to think about anything else except this.   But I have to say that when I turned on MSNBC yesterday afternoon to watch coverage of his memorial service, I was beginning to grow weary of it all.  I think part of it was that many of MSNBC’s heavy hitters were en route to the memorial, so there were inexperienced people on the air asking annoyingly repetitive questions.  “Please tell me about Tim Russert the man.”  “What did Tim Russert mean to you?”  “What do you see as Tim Russert’s most lasting legacy?”  Arrrrgh!   We have been down this road so many times already- enough!

But then the memorial service itself began – and I was thunderstruck at the powerful eloquence of those who spoke, and I realized that what had been missing from so much of the coverage earlier that day – and even over the weekend – was the searing power of carefully crafted words.  It’s one thing to speak from your gut and try to put into words the height and depth of your feelings for someone who has just died.  There is value in that – but after five days of the same sorts of answers to the same set of questions, the value grows thin.

But what we had at that memorial service was one masterpiece after another, with stunning words of tribute from Maria Shriver, Maria Cuomo, Brian Williams, and even the nun who helped Russert begin his life as a journalist when he was just 13 years old.  But the service began with the best – with the amazing Tom Brokaw.  His remarks were absolutely perfect- I would not have changed one word- and yet they were not perfect in a clinical, icy sort of way.  There was all kinds of heart in his words and you knew that he believed every single word to the bottom of his toes.   And I still cry when I replay his remarks and he gets to the part where he looks over to Luke Russert, seated on the stage, and says:

“And as I told you the other day, I’ve known you since you were a  faint image on a sonogram.  I remember the day your father called me and shouted into the telephone “a son!  I’m gonna have a son!”  However powerful and influential he became, whatever his fame and acclamation, nothing – nothing – was as important to him as being your father.”

As acutely as I felt this loss on Friday – I feel it even more acutely now.

pictured:  I really like the way this photograph turned out, even though the image of the TV screen is partly obscured by the reflection of our family room.  In a way that’s very appropriate for Tim Russert because he was one of those television icons who did not seem larger than life but rather like someone who would be comfortable in our home – or someone we would feel comfortable to have in our home.