Eulogy

My earliest memories are of Dad reading to me. He was a great reader to children—expressive and dramatic. And he was patient. When Mike and I were stuck in the ruts of toddlerhood obsession with one book (for Mike it was Katy and the Big Snow, for me, 'Twas the Night Before Christmas, year round), Dad read us those same books, over and over, playfully changing words to challenge our memories but providing the comfort for us of the same story, the beloved story, again and again. The gift of reading is one that both Mike and I passed along to our own children. It is a little piece of Dad's rich legacy.

As I struggled with his illness and anticipated his death, I sought comfort in words. Although Dad was not a poet or, for that matter, much of a fan of poetry, that is where I turned, to the art of words, to remember him, to honor him, to wrap my mind around my loss of him.

I started my search for a poem representative of my remarkable father where I was emotionally—focused on his end, his death. I considered the heavy rhymes of John Donne. His Holy Sonnets—“Death, be not proud, though some have called thee mighty and dreadful”—came to mind. But that was not right for Dad. Dad was too casual, too spontaneous, lived too much in the moment, for Donne's formal structures to speak for him.

I read Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose words were lighter, more celebratory. But Emerson felt a bit too proud, almost a shade pompous. And that, certainly, was not Dad, whose humility and life of service to others we remember today.

The Bronte sisters were too romantic. Dad was a man of fewer words, simpler words. He was straightforward, honest, and many times told me the truth when I didn't necessarily want to hear it.

My search for the right poem for this occasion ended with Carl Sandburg. He is a Midwestern poet who uses direct and descriptive language to create poems that celebrate humanity. They don't rhyme. They flow.

The Sandburg poem I chose for today is not about death. Instead, it is about the journey of life. And, as we all know, Dad's life was quite a journey. Whether he was travelling to Omaha or Baltimore to visit the grandkids, or to Tanzania to help build a hospital, or to Jamaica to work with orphaned boys, or to a youth group mission trip in Vermont, or from Orlando to Boston to deliver a bone marrow donation, Dad's life was full of roads travelled literally. But beyond that physical travel was the meaningful stuff of his life—making relationships, helping, serving in communities far and wide. We all know that about Dad. That is why we are here today.

This poem is a lovely representation of that duality—the literal journey from point A to point B and the more subtle one of relationship and meaning. This poem is called The Road and the End.

I shall foot it
Down the roadway in the dusk,
Where shapes of hunger wander
And the fugitives of pain go by.

I shall foot it
In the silence of the morning,
See the night slur into dawn,
Hear the slow great winds arise
Where tall trees flank the way
And shoulder toward the sky.

The broken boulders by the road
Shall not commemorate my ruin.
Regret shall be the gravel under foot.
I shall watch for
Slim birds swift of wing
That go where wind and ranks of thunder
Drive the wild processionals of rain.

The dust of the travelled road
Shall touch my hands and face.

Dad's journey surely was not without pain or regret. Disappointment and loss are essential elements of the human journey, and like any man, Dad experienced them. But in his travels, in his relationships with each of us, he had a full journey. And he finished his journey as he would have wanted it, with the dust of that travelled road, the dust of Christ-like service, the dust of commitment to marriage, fatherhood, and friendship, thick upon his hands and his face.