Eulogy for My Father
Michael J. Stein
I wrote most of my eulogy on the plane to Des Moines. I felt good about it. ‘Good’ is probably not the word, but I sat on it for a couple days, tweaked it a bit, and then the night before the funeral I read it to my wife.
“Yeah, no,” she said.
“What?! Seriously?”
“It sounds written.”
“It IS written.”
“But it’s like the obituary. It just different anecdotes. It’s not really, you know, from the heart heart.”
Gah!
There are many reasons I love my wife. Her honesty and emotional intelligence are two of them.
So I tossed and turned and rewrote it all in the morning. She was right.
Note: I kept the part about the birds and the family vacation video. (Watching the video with everyone I was hyper aware that maybe it was a little long, but no one let on.)
I’m not sure who the eulogy is for ultimately. Is it for the deceased, the one giving the eulogy, or the people attending? Dunno, but I did my best and left it all on the floor.
It’s still a little raw, like when you get a tooth pulled and you feel it every time you breathe, so I’m gonna put it here to keep it safe. And alive.
But I digress…
Last night the rabbi came over to the house to meet us for the first time. I don’t know how many of you know Rabbi Schuster, but it turns out he’s great. He was kind and warm and this was not his first rodeo. We sat in a circle and talked about my father. It was good. It bordered on intervention, but it was good. It reminded me of things. Confirmed things. Also I learned things. Before leaving, the rabbi said that when it comes to the eulogy, we shouldn’t try to say it all. So you should thank him because this was much much longer.
I have 5 words:
Flannel
Butch
Thesis
Birds
Conclusion
Flannel. I was going to wear all black today — because, you know, it’s slimming. But I called an audible this morning after a terrible night’s sleep. I decided to wear my flannel shirt for three reasons. I forget the first one, but the second is because my dad would have wanted me to dress warm. And the third is because I wanted to signal that I’m not interested in mourning. I’ve been mourning for years. I know I’m not supposed to say these things, but these last few years for my dad have been brutal. When my mom died, so did a huge chunk of my dad. She was everything to him, the absolute love of his life. And with his failing health and severe depression, it was awful. Now I’m not saying we need to get a band and put up streamers, but I want this to be a celebration of my father’s life. So that’s why I’m wearing flannel.
Butch. My father called me Butch. He always called me Butch. I don’t know where it came from or how it came to be and to a certain extent, I don’t care. I loved that he called me Butch. It was special. No one else had that nickname. It was mine. All mine. Further, whenever he called me Butch, it was good. I was not in any trouble. Stephen, on the other hand…
And as it eventually came to be, I called my dad Pop. I’m not sure how or when that happened. It might have been when I became a dad and I needed to differentiate my dad from me for my kids, but I started calling him Pop and it stuck.
Thesis. My thesis is that my dad loved life and didn’t want it to end. That’s why he was so crushed when my mother passed. And whenever I came for a visit, my dad cried when I left. Full tears, shaking body, the whole thing. Every time. As if we would never see each other again. My dad LOVED life and didn’t want it to end.
I have a video to support my thesis. I’m going to play it for you now.
As we get it set up, I’ll tell you about it. It’s a family vacation. And it has everything. It has adventure and excitement. It has humor, there’s golf. There’s laughing and dancing. It has goats. But it has this shot at the end where we’re coming back to port and my dad starts to cry. We’re the last boat in, and he’s crying because he doesn’t want it to end.
Don’t let the last few years of my dad’s life fool you. He had a great life. My mom can’t swim and he got her out on a boat in the middle of the ocean. And he was surrounded by the family he loves. He had it all. He loved life and didn’t want it to end. Ever.
Which brings me to birds. As my brother and I have been racing around shuttling friends and family and getting things in place for this funeral, I keep seeing birds. Not like a horror movie. More like a nature documentary. I see flocks of them flying in V’s across the sky. And because right now everything makes me think of my dad, the birds make me think of my dad. He’s free. He’s unburdened with doctor appointments and bills and feedings. He’s unencumbered from patches, pills, and ports. He is untethered from this mortal coil and he’s free. He’s not in pain. He’s not sad. He’s free. And if I understand death correctly, he is with my mom and they are dancing and laughing and dancing.
Before I conclude I want to thank Mike Kuperman who has helped me and my brother with all this. I think there was a moment where we were like, ‘Man, I wish Mom and Dad were here, and then we were like, ‘oh right’’. So thank you, Mike. And I especially want to thank my brother Ben, again, for his care and sacrifice. If not for him, we would have all met here a long time ago.
Conclusion. Relationships are complicated. But I don’t know that my relationship with my father was that complicated. I just wanted him to be proud of me. It’s that simple, really. And it wasn’t until after meeting with the rabbi last night as I listened to everyone talking about my father that I understood why I wanted him to be proud of me. I wanted him to be proud of me because I was proud of him. Everything he’s done. Everything he’s accomplished. What he taught me. What he showed me. What he shared with me. What he gave me… ALL of it.
In short, my father was a good man. A really good man. And I am so incredibly lucky to have been his son and even luckier to have had him as a father.
