Last week Rusel DeMaria, my sifu’s partner, died after a long struggle with dementia. I am told that his last hours were peaceful, calm, and pain-free, and that is a blessing. Before that he had the painful and frightening experience of watching his own decline, and I choose to remember him as he was before that. His star shone brightly for as long as it could.

I was lucky to get to know him first as an assistant instructor, later as a taiji brother, and always as a friend. He had a glittering wit, able to draw out the comedy in almost any situation, along with a deep font of puns and wordplay. He was a passionate music lover and a wonderful flamenco guitarist, though he could never quite let go of comparing himself to the very best players and underrating his own talent. He was also a historian of the video game industry, as far as I am aware still the only person I’ve met who has their own wookieepedia entry.

As you can probably imagine from that quick sketch, Rus had lived in a lot of places, got to know many very interesting people, and was full of stories. He was a great storyteller, and losing the ability to share his stories must have been extraordinarily hard to accept.

I can think of at least two ways that memories of him live on around me. One is the music of Paco de Lucía, a long-time friend of his, whose music he introduced me to. Among the many stories he loved to tell about Paco is that Rus lent him an oud on a whim, thinking maybe this great guitarist could do something interesting with it. And then Paco’s next album—Almoraima, the one that really established him as Nuevo Flamenco’s rising star—opened with a track full of dazzling oud playing. So in some small way we can thank Rus for that sound, and one of the first things I did when I learned of his passing was to put that album on again.

The other way Rus’s memory will always live with me is a little more obvious: through his taiji teaching. He had and was willing to share a lot of wisdom about the subtleties of practice; how to really feel what taiji is doing, beyond the mechanics of which foot to move when (though he taught me some of that too).

I don’t always remember exactly who taught me what and when, but there is one particular lesson that I’ve always specifically associated with Rus. We had classes at Seattle’s International Children’s Park one summer, and one day in particular Sifu Viola had Rus and I go to the side to practice longer segments of the form together while she taught the first steps to some newer students. We got to talking about fajing, and Rus converted me to his approach: even when doing a form with a lot of expressed energy, the final jīn gāng dǎo duì / Buddha’s Warrior Pounds Mortar should always be done slowly and softly, to start settling one’s energy and finish on a suitably calm note. Every time I do a form that way and remember to dial the ending back as he advised, I remember that day and his teaching.

I like to think that in the end, after a few very painful years in which he had less and less control of everything, Rus was able to get that kind of calm conclusion to his own life.