Avram Kalisky was a mensch — a dear man who was brilliant and funny with a sense of irony, irritable, New York Jewish, and scrappy. He sounded like my family when he spoke, and I loved his sound.

He was a friend to me at Ryan Estate and we teamed up on projects — brainstorming, collaborating, and ultimately fixing them. Mainly, the problems involved our smart TV with which we showed “Friday Night at the Movies” every week. I leaned on him: “What do you think, Avram? Should I check this or maybe that?” He’d shrug and say, “Try it.” When we discovered the solution, I’d grin at him and he would grin back. No words, but a feeling of delightful triumph between us.

My mother once taunted me, “Oh, Carol, you love everyone.” Well, I certainly loved this man. He met me in a place that few others have as together we unraveled seemingly impossible, complicated technological knots that I felt were my responsibility for Movie night to go smoothly. And he was there with me.

Avram’s illness progressed but he was still coming to Friday night movies. Though speaking little, just his presence gave me confidence. I knew he was watching and noodling with the current problem. Once in a while he would quietly say, “Hit that button,” and bingo, we were in good shape. Sometimes he would tell me to actually hit the DVD player and once in a while it worked. Then we’d laugh at the silliness of it all.

Running into him in the lobby, I’d say, “How are you doing, Avram?” and he’d grunt, “Eh.” Or I might say, “How’s it going, Avram?” as he pushed his walker toward the mailboxes, and he would answer, “It goes if you push it,” and we’d laugh.

In 2006 Avram and several other Lincoln men of a certain age put together a nude calendar of themselves as a fundraiser for the Council on Aging. One Friday night he announced loudly, “I was Mr. November!” People looked surprised — what could he possibly mean? I ran up to my condo and got the calendar he was referring to, which I had carefully saved. I passed it around to the laughter and shrieks of the group, mostly female. Avram said, “And I cooked that turkey!” I understand that the calendar raised around $30,000.

When he and Esther first moved into Ryan, he could walk. Then Avram’s legs began to weaken. He’d say to me as he traveled across the lobby to the elevator, “I can’t figure out what’s wrong with my legs.” I would try to figure it out along with him. “Maybe you have Lyme?” and he would growl back at me, “I don’t have Lyme!” This was one problem we could not solve together, no matter what. I wanted to solve it, badly, and wished and wondered for a long time.

I will always miss him.