In English, according to Merriam-Webster, there are two words we use for a speech given in remembrance of one who has passed. The first—elegy—can be traced to the Greek word elegos, which translates as “song of mourning.” The second and more common word—eulogy—also comes from Greek, but communicates something different. Formed from the Greek roots eu-, meaning “good,” and logos, meaning “speech,” eulogy conveys the notion of a “good speech” or praise about the individual. And so, while my words contain an elegiac melody that defines mourning, I hope you will hear it instead as a song of praise for the man who I proudly called “Dad.”
Before Dad passed, I imagined this eulogy. Not in some macabre sense, but rather as preparation, for the inevitable. Because I knew what would happen; I knew what would happen the moment he took his final breath. In those imaginations, the ideas and phrasings seemed clear, free-flowing; at the forefront of my mind. But then, in the words of Virginia Woolf, “Suddenly, without giving us time to arrange our thoughts or prepare our phrases, our guest has left us.” And since his death—his bodily death—my brain seems shrouded by fog. I knew what would happen, and so it did.
I suppose this is how grief works, how we protect ourselves from sorrow through obscurity.
I recall asking Dad what he wanted to be when he was a child, that frequent “what did you want to be when you grew up” question. He never thought long before giving his reply: “I’ll let you know when I grow up.” That was Dad, ever the clown. And though we, his children, agreed this occasion should be a celebration of his life—perhaps not joyous, but at least a moment replacing sadness—I will leave those things to my brother seeing how, all things being relative, I was always the more serious, and some might say gloomy, child.
Nevertheless, I will do my best to do justice, if justice can ever be found, to Dad’s life and memory. And I hope you will allow me the luxury of sorrow, allow me the honor of memorializing my father—however long it may take and however often I break. After all, no one has ever accused a lawyer of being brief.
How does one begin to eulogize a man who possessed so many positive attributes and whose impact can be felt not only generationally, but also laterally?
More than twenty years ago, I spent a summer away at Parris Island. Dad wrote dutifully that summer, at least once a week if not more. For whatever reason, I saved those letters. And I think the answer to my question lies there, scribbled in his familiar handwriting: “Remembering me is all that I ask.”
That is, we begin, as we end—with memories.
Born in 1948 in Lewistown, it wouldn’t be a stretch to say Dad was raised by a village. Those villagers—his mother and father, his Aunt Betty and Uncle Vern (who we affectionately called “Brownie”), his grandparents—informed and shaped his personality. Indeed, many of the traits we remember of Dad can be traced in a straight line to those influences: his work ethic from his father, grandfather, and uncle; his sense of humor from watching Laurel and Hardy or The Three Stooges with his father and the time spent in Brownie’s eccentric aura; his appreciation for music and a deep philanthropic impulse also from Brownie; his notion of love from his doting mother; and, if we’re honest, a temper from a mixture of all of the above.
The influences embedded themselves and echo in the memories that rise like the sea whenever we think of him. Those memories are both shared and individual: sometimes remembered, as experienced, by one of us alone, and sometimes remembered collectively, bits and pieces of the story stored in the brains of a few, a memory that coalesces in the retelling. And I suppose that’s what the poet Ellen Miller meant when she wrote:
And every night when we look up and see a certain star…
We will know within our hearts exactly where you are.
So on this day we say good-bye as you now depart.
Although far from our touch, never far from our hearts.
And what do I remember of his bright star? I see his Christmas lights aglow and the living in his eyes. I hear his roaring laughter and the sound of him attempting to sing along with Frankie Valli. I feel the rumble of him drumming on the steering wheel and the smack of a horn section in a drum and bugle corps performance. I smell his coffee breath and, unfortunately, his gas. I see his goofy mannerisms and joy in an oversized margarita. I hear the sound of him breaking laughter and the sound of him attempting to sing along with Frankie Valli. rocks for the pond and cussing at Penn State, of pins crashing as we bowled on a snow day. I feel the embarrassment of an overnighting girlfriend finding him standing at the refrigerator in his underwear and the crushing heartbreak of the rare occasions when he cried. I see him sitting in his recliner smiling as his grandchildren tear open presents and the look of pride when I returned home after a lengthy absence. I hear him and Arleen bickering playfully and Betsy informing everyone that “Ray is taking his clothes off” during a Thanksgiving gathering on the Outer Banks.
Actually, I don’t remember if it was Betsy who announced Dad’s sudden striptease, though it sounds like her, right?
Yet that’s the thing about memories: I don’t need to remember the details. Indeed, we often don’t. Sometimes we substitute words. Or who was present. Or the order of events. But what we almost never forget, what we rarely misremember, what we seldom mistake are the feelings felt in those moments. I see, I hear, I feel…more memories than I could ever recall; memories that could fill a thousand lifetimes. And the feelings I most often remember are those of joy, and love.
While his village upbringing may have shaped his personality, life, as it is wont to do, refined it. And at one point, Dad found himself needing to navigate the world as a single parent to a young boy all the while mourning—quietly, insularly—his first marriage. Eventually he met Arleen, and together the two again made a house a home for one little boy. But the experience, I think, quite naturally changed him.
It’s a sense I have only now, looking back upon his life and his words. And what changed was his softening, the development of some greater sentimentality, a change not everyone had the fortune to see. In fairness, I think that softness was always present somewhere beneath the surface; his letters to me during boot camp, after all, were imbued with that sentimentality. But in his later years, in that empty nest period, Dad’s poetic softness began to find an expression that had been buried earlier in life.
For him, that sentimentality found its greatest expression in family. Many years ago—I think I was in college—I met him and Arleen at Olive Garden. This was the phase of his life when he started wearing a lot of jewelry: the gold chain bracelet, the pinky ring, the gold-colored watch. Anyway, they had just come from a large funeral for the family member of one of their friends; I believe it was a relative of Dick, but I can’t remember. What I can remember is the impression the experience left on Dad.
Dad recalled entering the Church and finding a receiving line from the narthex to the apse. As he walked down the aisle to pay his respects, the family members in the receiving line shook his hand. They didn’t thank him for attending; instead, they offered condolences for his loss.
A profound difference that pulled at Dad’s heart. And when he finished, Dad punctuated the story—emphasized it even—with this line: “That’s family.”
Family meant everything to him. In one of his letters, he stressed the importance of family, calling his family “my life.” Everything else was secondary to Dad; nothing mattered more. It’s no surprise, then, that he loved National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. Like Clark Griswold, Dad was the “last true family man.”
And so, I think the greatest tribute to his life and legacy is just this—all of you sitting here, privately sifting through your own memories of Dad even as I speak. And if I close my eyes, I can see him smiling a wide smile at all of us gathered here—gold chain, pinky ring, and all.
I wish to end with a verse from another poet, Mary Oliver:
Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us,
even in the leafless winter,
even in the ashy city.
I am thinking now
of grief, and of getting past it.
If the devil offered me the Faustian bargain of more time with Dad, I might be tempted to accept. I wish I had more time with him, the whole of him. It’s a sentiment I know we all share. But I also know the time has come for his story to end.
Only, not him. Because, that’s the thing: in the too few years when our lives overlapped, Dad gave me an infinity. And that’s something that Alzheimer’s, notwithstanding all its destructive might, could never destroy: the infinity of memories. Dad’s no longer alive, but he’s still very much living.
And so, I choose to replace grief with those memories, with the time when life filled his eyes. I will live within that infinity he gifted me.
After all, remembering him is all that he asked.