6 months later and what does one say ?

Its always interesting that when you want to eulogize someone, you always start out talking about the man, his character, his life, but inevitably, it becomes a conversation about yourself.
What you feel, what you think and what the man did in your life.

So how does one eulogize the man who taught him everything he knows ?

Now this statement isn’t made to negate the teaching of my mother, but lets be honest here, if it weren’t for him, I would of never learned how to truly listen and learn from my mother.

So How do I, as a son, find the words to give the proper weight and gravity of remembrance to a life that truly deserves it ?

Ultimately it seems, I can’t.

There are so many intangible moments and memories that my grasp of the human lexicon will no doubt fail to properly capture the true essence of my time with my father, and in the end, of him.

I haven’t cried yet.
I find I just can’t.
Which doesn’t mean I don’t want to, or as some have said,
that I never really cared.

I’m just pissed.
Completely, totally and unapologetically, pissed the f&^$ off.

Good men, it seems, are meant to suffer.


Pops would often tell me,

“Joel, Sh^% just happens, doesn’t mean there isn’t a reason, but you can’t explain it and it sure as hell doesn’t seem fair”

Which would almost always be followed with

“But that doesn’t give you an excuse to be an @&^hole. It just means you have to be better than it”

And right there is the closest I could ever hope to properly convey the true essence of my father.

A man who when life was unfair, cruel and
(what appeared to those of us left here now)
a creator that turned his back on a good man…
He never once was an a@#$ole about it.
Never once lost the faith that while there may not be a discernible reason for what happens, but there is always strand of reason in all of it.

I know, its cheap and almost hollow in comparison to the life that’s gone, but it is the closest i can muster with our paltry vocabulary.

Did this happen due to Fate, God, the universe, or simply a random coincidence due to genetics ?

I’ve no idea, and I can’t explain it.

What I can do, is not be an as$%ole and be better than it.

That’s how I’ll properly eulogize.
That’s how he would of wanted it.

So hold the ones you love close and keep the faith,
Joel
aka: Therapy Boy