A few months ago I was talking to someone about her experience writing her mother's eulogy. She told me that what struck her is that she thought that, because she was close with her mother, she should be the one to do it. She figured that it would be emotional and difficult but that ultimately she would know what to say and that she would know how to do her justice. This wasn't the reality, though, she told me. She told me that "nothing I could have said could have expressed what kind of person we lost that day".
I realized that I also believed this. But when I began to think about ever having to write a eulogy or any kind of speech for my father I, too, would fumble for proper words and anecdotes.
My father and I were brought to this life for each other. I know this now that I am older- that I merely had the privilege of knowing him my whole life.
I am inclined to believe there is more than DNA, sharing meals, kinship, space, and history- more than anything I could point out or grasp in words that binds us together and though there are others in my life I feel this way about too, my father has been there since before these abstract concepts had any kind of shape for me. Geographically, we are separated, but something makes everywhere I go reflect him, in part.
If I am truly blessed, this is something I hope to pass down to my children, should i have them. This bond we share is something I still struggle to put in words. I wonder with regretful, whimsical anxiety what I could ever say if I had to write a eulogy...if I could only say "here I am, giving my father's eulogy, but the words have died with him".
I am fiercely independent, but still I am a sail to the wind and the warmth that has been his love and influence in my life and whatever ocean moves us would then become something else entirely at the stage of a eulogy. Our relationship would stop being shared and this world would not just be depleted of him- I know that it would be something else entirely. My eulogy would be an attempt to bring that world back briefly, if only to have others get a brief glimpse of it through a port hole.
A great part of my ambition in life is a drive to take the love and care my father invested in his family and pay it forward in the community- to reach out the same way he effortlessly lit up before others and to have an effect on this world building on the effect he has had on mine.
My children and husband and family and friends will not know what I am trying to convey with perhaps feeble, perhaps powerful faith based on a lifetime of connection and spiritual fervor that there will be another life. In the next life, we may not be brought together by the convenience of my birth and his parenthood, but I like to believe that people are brought together in all lives.
Perhaps the only eulogy I could give would not be a service to others, but a promise to him- to see you in another life, brother.
I realized that I also believed this. But when I began to think about ever having to write a eulogy or any kind of speech for my father I, too, would fumble for proper words and anecdotes.
My father and I were brought to this life for each other. I know this now that I am older- that I merely had the privilege of knowing him my whole life.
I am inclined to believe there is more than DNA, sharing meals, kinship, space, and history- more than anything I could point out or grasp in words that binds us together and though there are others in my life I feel this way about too, my father has been there since before these abstract concepts had any kind of shape for me. Geographically, we are separated, but something makes everywhere I go reflect him, in part.
I am fiercely independent, but still I am a sail to the wind and the warmth that has been his love and influence in my life and whatever ocean moves us would then become something else entirely at the stage of a eulogy. Our relationship would stop being shared and this world would not just be depleted of him- I know that it would be something else entirely. My eulogy would be an attempt to bring that world back briefly, if only to have others get a brief glimpse of it through a port hole.
A great part of my ambition in life is a drive to take the love and care my father invested in his family and pay it forward in the community- to reach out the same way he effortlessly lit up before others and to have an effect on this world building on the effect he has had on mine.
My children and husband and family and friends will not know what I am trying to convey with perhaps feeble, perhaps powerful faith based on a lifetime of connection and spiritual fervor that there will be another life. In the next life, we may not be brought together by the convenience of my birth and his parenthood, but I like to believe that people are brought together in all lives.
Perhaps the only eulogy I could give would not be a service to others, but a promise to him- to see you in another life, brother.
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