just to clear the air …
Eulogy – Dad, May 15th, 2006
I’d like to thank everyone who has come and wished that they could be here today.
You all knew my dad in a different way. He was a son to some, often a confidant in tough times and a friend. To thoroughly describe my relationship with him would take too long and frankly, could not do it justice. But I will try to sum it up for you.
Queen Victoria once spoke of her father, Prince Edward,
“None of you can ever be proud enough of being the child of such a Father who has not his equal in this world – so great, so good, so faultless. Try, all of you, to follow in his footsteps and don’t be discouraged, for to be really in everything like him none of you, I am sure, will ever be. Try, therefore, to be like him in some points, and you will have acquired a great deal”
While not faultless, my dad had a great many virtues that more than made up for anything that he may have lacked. He was compassionate, inquisitive, tried to reserve judgement of people and situations until he understood everything about them, and was a supportive and challenging ear to bend. He lived his life playing the devil’s advocate, constantly assessing and reassessing the world around him and his role within it.
He tried to instil these same attributes in me, and though far less consistent, they too could define me. My dad inspired me to be a better person, a more moderate soul and to concern myself with my impact on the world, not solely its affects upon me. He was my first and dearest best friend and will remain so because there’s no one who could ever compare to him, through my eyes.
One of the only wishes that he expressed to me regarding his death was that he would like to rest near his mother and their adoptive family member, Lorna, on these grounds. Unfortunately, his death came so suddenly that he cannot be buried here and so, after cremation, we will leave his ashes with the two women that meant so much to him. This was a hard decision to make, but Walt Whitman’s words in the poem Of Him I Love Day and Night sums up our reasoning.
Of him I love day and night, I dream’d I heard he was dead;
And I dream’d I went where they had buried him I love—but he was not in that place;
And I dream’d I wander’d, searching among burial-places, to find him;
And I found that every place was a burial-place;
The houses full of life were equally full of death, (this house is now;)
The streets, the shipping, the places of amusement, the Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, the Manhattan, were as full of the dead as of the living,
And fuller, O vastly fuller, of the dead than of the living;
–And what I dream’d I will henceforth tell to every person and age,
And I stand henceforth bound to what I dream’d;
And now I am willing to disregard burial-places, and dispense with them;
And if the memorials of the dead were put up indifferently everywhere, even in the room where I eat or sleep, I should be satisfied;
And if the corpse of any one I love, or if my own corpse, be duly render’d to powder, and pour’d in the sea, I shall be satisfied;
Or if it be distributed to the winds, I shall be satisfied.
