Your Guess Is as Good as Mine

The following was written by Amir's boss and read aloud during a memorial for Amir held by his coworkers and clients a few days after his death:

"I realized over the last several days that Amir touched everyone's lives who entered the tennis center over the last 6 years. Every kid, adult, member and guest he had helped in this club in some way with amazing poise, courtesy and honesty. That is why I remember I hired Amir that I noticed he had those qualities.

He loved his Lakers and loved baseball and all you had to do is ask him about either and he would start talking. You may have thought he was a quiet, shy kind of guy but just get him going on most subjects actually and it got his mind and voice going.

I learned new things about Amir from members and friends over the last several days that he had shared with different people that I never knew about. Such as his love for doing crosswords with ease (often teasing others who did and those that attempted them, he'd often say the daily crossword was easy and he had already finished it). I also never knew about his love to write literature and his amazing story about his grandmother, who survived Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps to eventually get his family to America. If you haven't read this, please do so, it is an unforgettable story.

Amir told me how he felt that SAC [Sunset Athletic Club] had saved his life over the last several years because he was finally able to get insurance to help him with the cost of his medications and treatment. Amir treated SAC and its members as it was his life here. I want to say thanks to all the friends/members that helped him along the way survive through some tough times.

I am going to read you something I found that Amir had written a couple of years ago that I think gives us some insight to how Amir's mind worked and what a great person he was...

Endless false starts, hiccups and blown promises later, here we are again. Unsolicited musings from my heart and brain to yours. A lifetime of transformative joys, sorrows, indifference, low-brow humor, cruel irony and bitter sarcasm. From literature to sports, philosophy to pet-rearing, I take pride in spanning a wide swath of disciplines. I intend to take you on a journey that you'll most likely soon forget. I'm your everyman neighbor, if your everyman neighbor was a reclusive, technologically challenged Bar Mitzvah boy with a displaced chip on his shoulder for absolutely no apparent reason. Only one caveat here, folks: Your Guess is as Good as Mine. At turns immodest and self-loathing, decent and crude, radiant and dull. I operate on the premise that we're all individually carving out our place in this world. At the end of the day, the differing paths are all born of the same motivation--the need to sift through the bullshit and chaos and hone in on something authentic and lasting. Corny? Probably. Beautiful? Certainly.

Amir, we won't forget your journey."