Dilly-Bum-Dally and Star Songs of Long Ago

Stephen Earl Russell
(July 11, 1954 - July 6, 1996)

“The Martian Delegation vetoes the bill.”

My brother Steve would grab his face, contort his features, and announce the vote in an alien voice. It never failed to make us laugh. He was the best imitator of voices and faces, and his daughter Christin inherited the talent.

Steve was also the most creative person I ever knew. Blew me out of the water. He wrote poems and music, painted, sketched, and played with computers. He was van Gogh returned, including the tragedy of moods high and low, so that his life was a mixture of joy, faith, and torture. He loved his family, his daughters, and his one true love, and, in fact, was able to heal that rift in a miraculous way.

Dilly-Bum-Dally.

When he was very young, he loved Dairy Queen Dilly bars, and was branded with that nickname for years.

He introduced me to many musical artists, and to a radio series called “Ruby the Galactic Gumshoe,” something he discovered during a radio disc jokey stint in Chicago, late at night. I gave him Jon Anderson singing Vangelis’ “I’ll Find My Way Home,” and he told me that he’d start the song on his commute to work in Chicago, and that by the time Jon sang, “My sun shall rise in the east, so shall my heart be at peace,” the sun would be rising through the train windows.

I miss you, Steve. We all miss you. Your daughters celebrate every part of their life with you, brief as it was.

Steve would have celebrated his 68th birthday this year. I believe that his heart is at peace where he is, and that his sun has risen, but we miss his voice and rubber face, artistry and laughter. He never stopped trying. He never stopped reaching. He never stopped loving.

After his tragic death, I had a vivid dream of Steve showing me a store in the old part of Chicago with every toy our family ever owned, new and pristine. I turned to him. “Where did you get these?” He said, “I’ll show you.” The dream was in vivid color, and he drove us in a convertible until he made eye contact, and said, “I’m happy now. I just wanted you to know.” I woke up, comforted, and shared the dream with his family.

Many of Supertramp’s songs remind me of Steve. “The Logical Song,” in particular.

“When I was young, it seemed that life was so wonderful,
A miracle, oh, it was beautiful, magical.
And all the birds in the trees,
well, they’d be singing so happily
Oh, joyfully, playfully watching me.

But then they sent me away to teach me
how to be sensible,
Logical, oh, responsible, practical.
Then they showed me a world
Where I could be so dependable,
Oh, clinical, intellectual, cynical.

There are times when all the world’s asleep
The questions run too deep
For such a simple man…”
(Richard Davies, Roger Hodgson)

I meant this post to be funny, because he could be, but his life didn’t start out beautiful. Maybe magical. He had eye operations when he was an infant, and had trouble with his vision his entire life. Steve was a prayer warrior, an artist, a comic. Yet filled with wisdom.

I was fortunate to enjoy his company when he was grown, and in spite of his trials, we all admired him and wanted him to stay, needed him to stay.

I’ll leave you with his own words from a letter he wrote to me years ago, and lines from one of his poems.

“When we leave here, we will come away with growth, understanding and compassion. It might seem nice sometimes to wish for an uneventful life, but without these lessons, sometimes very painful, we would leave here in the same state that we started with, and there is no greater sin that a wasted life…Remember the lesson of the wasted life. Use what you have, and not just for family, but for all those poor souls who yearn for messages from ‘home.’”

Steve, yours was anything but a wasted life, just too brief.

Happy divine birthday, brother, father, husband, son. We love you.

Star-songs of long ago
Bathe my heart in their heavenly glow
There’s just one thing I want to know
One thing I ask of Thee
When, oh when, Lord, are You going to call on me?