My father had three very distinct sections to his life.
The first part of his life he lived for his parents. I’ve heard stories of terrific fights between he and his father. Yet my dad carried his father’s tenets of career and family to heart. He dutifully got a career, got a wife, had kids. He stayed in this part of his life for half of it. When the kids grew up, he moved into the next part of his life.
When I was 16 my father came out of the closet.
He then lived his life for himself. His entrance into the gay community was like a re-birth for him. He joined Toronto Area Gays Coming Out Support Group, one of the few support groups at the time and forged long lasting friendships through them. My father, the serious man who would dole out parental decisions with curt Yes, Nos or “Wait… what did your Mother tell you?” suddenly became a funny man.
Dad and I moved to Brantford during my last year in High school. We lived in a large mansion that had 6 rental units in it and one Halloween the upstairs neighbours decided to hold a costume party. We talked a bit about what we were going to wear but nothing came of it, I though we were just going to crash it in street clothes. The night of the party, Dad came home with two cheap plastic jumpsuit superhero costumes with thin plastic masks. The ones you’d get at WalMart. I was Captain America. He was Wonder Woman.
Thing is, he bought kid sized jumpsuits. They were impossibly small. We managed to slip into them, the cuffs came up to our knees and elbows. They were tight.
We set out for the party and we hit the stairs going up to the apartment. Our first step we split the side seam from thigh to armpit. By the time we got to the top, we were wearing strips of plastic off our shoulders. Thankfully we had underwear on underneath.
In the 90s dad had his first encounter with his pancreas, which literally left him in pain every time he got near alcohol. His surgery was a marker into the third part of his life:
After this he lived his life for other people.
Da was already active in Prime Timers, as was a weekly volunteer with ACT. I remember hauling h’ors dourves with him in the rain at one Fashion Cares. When his pancreas got in the way he was forced to vacate his seat on the World Board of Prime Timers when his health started to fail. He scaled back his availability to two acts of volunteerism: MCCT and the Gardiner Ceramics Museum. Both groups became central to his life and enabled him to come into contact with such amazing people.
But that didn’t mean he wasn’t available for advice. Friends, family and co-workers would come to him and find him a wealth of experience and knowledge. Around this time he developed a motto:
I’ve told you what to do, now do what you like.
It was my father’s mantra in the later years of his life.
Now. I’m going to tell you what to do…
If you love someone tell them right now that you do.
Now. Do what you like.
11 thoughts on “My Eulogy”
It was a great eulogy, and perfectly summarized the phases Dad went through. We cannot ever refer to Dad’s style of parenting in the last decade without pulling out his stock phrase. I am working on incorporating it into my own life, it’s just the “do what you like” part is the toughest. He was a very wise and serene man to be able to put it into practice.
Truly beautiful.
I like turtles!
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Ted, so sorry to hear that your dad died. As a father, I’ll risk saying that he must have been a happy man to have a son who lurved him like you do.
Right before I read this blog, I texted my wife to tell her that I loved her. I think I’ll do it again.
After reading this, I just told my wife (via email) that I loved her. However, I also combined it with a request that she pick up some dough and harvest some tomatoes and other veggies from her garden so I can grill us up a couple of pizzas this week*. I have decided that from now on, any expressions of love will be combined with pizza-related requests.
Excellent eulogy, Ted. I never met Amy’s mother, as she died before we started dating, but over the years I’ve come to feel that I knew her and in a weird way I feel like I miss her, even without ever meeting her. Reading about your dad I feel the same way. Admittedly I don’t even know you all that well (you’re that big hairy artistic and funny gay guy from the internet, right?) but I feel like your dad is someone I’ve come to know a bit (as one of the many characters who populate this here blog) and I regret never having actually met him.
*if you’ve never had pizza grilled over hardwood, you’re totally missing out on life.
Agreed.
It’s beautiful, and was delivered beautifully.
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