In Memory of Sir Patrick Stewart
This is going to be more of a meditation on my own thoughts and feelings than it is a eulogy, and as such it will be a poor eulogy. But as I did not know Sir Patrick Stewart personally, that feels appropriate.
If you had asked me, prior to today, whether I would grieve the passing of Sir Patrick Stewart, I could not have told you with accuracy, but I am almost certain I would have said no. Those who know me are probably aware that I have a somewhat cynical take on celebrity—I tend to believe that if you don’t know for sure a famous and successful celebrity is a terrible person, that’s only because you don’t know the specific way in which they are terrible yet; and if you had to make a bet on whether or not they would be revealed as a terrible person eventually, the safe money is on “yes.” So while I would not have said anything like that about Sir Patrick specifically, I also would not have told you that I expected to be emotionally impacted by his passing in any real way.
As I sit here this evening, grieving Sir Patrick’s passing and contemplating a world left darker in his absence, I find myself confronting a truth I have been blessedly fortunate to learn only a few times so far in my life—we do not choose who we grieve. Grief is a process, true, and in many ways an active one, but it is never something we opt into beforehand, and it seldom begins with our preparedness or consent. My own grief, though unexpected, will of course be very small compared to that of those who had genuine connections to Sir Patrick, but as I find myself grieving unexpectedly, I will talk a little about my impression of a man who was apparently a greater inspiration to me than I ever realized.
I was lucky enough to grow up in one of those rare households where Star Wars and Star Trek were held in equal regard; though both my parents enjoyed each, my mother was the one with a real bent for speculative fiction, and my early childhood memories happily include those times when I was allowed to stay up late to finish an episode of Star Trek with my mom while she was folding laundry. Both The Original Series and The Next Generation were frequent favorites, and though I mostly preferred the galaxy far, far away, I nonetheless grew up on a healthy diet of diverse science fiction. As I got older, The Next Generation became a real favorite of mine, and I remember my brothers and me being genuinely excited to take a break from hitting each other with plastic lightsabers to catch a rerun of TNG.
I of course also encountered Sir Patrick’s Charles Xavier in the X-Men films, though I don’t know that I would have said he was a favorite of mine. If anything, it was Sir Ian McKellen’s performance as Magneto, the Holocaust survivor whose quiet, burning rage drives him to prevent the repetition of history, that really resonated with me as a young Jewish boy growing up with a robust Holocaust education. But in truth, it is the dynamic between the two of them that is the real star of those films. Still, I think Professor Xavier had an impact on me beyond what I realized.
Sitting here this evening, affected in a way I never anticipated, I find myself trying to determine what it was about Sir Patrick Stewart and the characters he portrayed that was so influential to me. As much as he was an incredible actor, I do not think it was simply the poise and gravitas of his performances. Other actors whom I have admired, and whose performances I have loved dearly, have passed away without leaving me feeling the loss of a role model, as sad as some of those losses have made me. I think that what was special to me about Sir Patrick’s portrayals of these characters is something that by all accounts was special about the man behind them as well.
I heard it said just recently (unfortunately I cannot remember where, so please forgive me) that on The Original Series the “Prime Directive” was the rule they would always cite immediately prior to breaking it, whereas on The Next Generation, the “Prime Directive” was the rule they would bend over backwards to avoid breaking, even when it cost them dearly. When I think about Captain Jean-Luc Picard or Professor Charles Xavier, this is what comes to mind for me—men of integrity, men of principle, men of honor. Human beings who made mistakes and had feelings and expressed themselves, whose profound strength of character came not just from their ability to be strong and principled but from their ability to be kind and gentle and empathetic. Men who always strove to live up to the best of themselves, even while acknowledging their struggles and their essential humanity.
I wonder, sometimes, about great actors, whether their greatest roles reveal truths about who they are, or whether the greatness of their acting is in hiding who they are and disappearing into the role. I can’t say for certain, and maybe it doesn’t matter as much as I thought it did, but as I’ve read more this evening about the man Sir Patrick was, I believe in his case it really was the former—that those characters were brought to life by the truth of who Sir Patrick was, by his very real strength of character.
I think it’s noteworthy that Sir Patrick was a survivor of a childhood marked by domestic violence. He spoke openly throughout his life about his father’s PTSD and violence against his mother, and about the impact it had on him and his family. Reading some of his accounts put me in mind of another role model of mine—my mother. She, too, is a person of integrity, a person whose strength and kindness were forged in a crucible she should never have had to endure—not her, not Sir Patrick, not any child. It is the sort of experience from which, if a person emerges completely broken, no one could blame them. But I do think that when someone comes out of that situation and grows up to be a person of integrity, of empathy, of enduring kindness, it reveals a powerful strength of character on their part, one worth striving to emulate. I admire them both greatly for it.
I’ve had more thoughts about Sir Patrick this evening, but as I said at the beginning, I am writing this as a way to process my own feelings, and as such I think it serves poorly as a eulogy for a man I admired more than I ever realized, who, it turns out, was a role model for me in ways I hardly could have articulated. I will simply close with this. In the Jewish community, when speaking about someone who has passed away, we typically say “zichrono li’vracha,” “May his memory be a blessing.” In this case, I will add that I think Sir Patrick Stewart’s memory ought to be a blessing, and so it falls to all of us to make it so.