I lost my father last week. I’m just now trying to emerge from the fog of that loss. I have a very big family, and checking out for more than a week and being able to spend time with those closest to me has been a great solace. Probably the greatest comfort was the wake, a Catholic ritual quite popular on Long Island (and I imagine elsewhere) in which the dead body is on display in a casket for friends and family to gather around to say their last goodbyes and share stories. If you have seen The Sopranos you have a sense of what I’m talking about.
A scene from the Sopranos featuring Tony preparing to pay his respects at wake
It’s a tradition I grew up with, and while it has become a bit of an industry, the occasion to grieve publicly together is quite powerful. The ritual provides a sense of closure that might otherwise be elusive, and in the face of death even the mightiest of materialists has to struggle with the great unknown of the hereafter.
The Sopranos wake scene featuring the father Intintola in between meals at a parishioner’s home
Anyway, as I was working with my brothers and sisters to prepare the services, I was asked to come up with something for the Requiem Mass at the wake, a time allotted by the priest for folks to share stories and eulogize the deceased. I had been asked to do the same thing for my mother almost twenty years ago when she passed, but I was a complete mess so that never happened. I’m sad it didn’t because trying to reflect on a life in words while those emotions are still quite raw is a therapeutic complement to the requiem. So, below was my brief eulogy that was crafted to encourage others who came to share their own stories, but more on that anon. For now, here is the eulogy:
My children might be shocked at the idea of my speaking publicly given after ten years in Italy they’re conditioned to believe I should only ever speak inside the house. When I’m out and about in Trento and I start uttering my trademark terrible Italian, I immediately hear “Dad!” and their fingers go to their lips and their eyes signal desperately for me to stop talking. So right now they must be beyond themselves, but I just want them to know: “I have a voice too and I want to use it!” Aren’t dads supposed to embarrass their kids?
More seriously, let me start by saying thank you to everyone who has come tonight to pay their respects. Interestingly enough, our father—for reasons not entirely clear to us—spent a fair amount of his adult life attending wakes across Nassau County. In fact, I’m sure if at all possible he’d be more than happy to trade places with any one of you right now ? Alas, that’s not meant to be, this will officially be our father’s last wake.
Thinking more about his gravitation towards wakes, I wonder if he had been preparing himself for this day all along? Maybe the loss of his own parents was the impetus? I wonder if attendance helped remind him of what’s truly important in this life? Or maybe, just maybe, he was drawn to all the stories that get shared by friends and families.
While I can’t say for sure why my father attended wakes so regularly—he wasn’t one to share his innermost thoughts and secrets, to be sure—right now I truly appreciate that a good, Long Island wake provides a welcome opportunity for each of us to share a story about the deceased.
Stories are how an ordinary life, like our father’s, becomes extraordinary. Stories capture his sense of humor, his idiosyncrasies, and most importantly a deeper and clearer sense of the soul we’ve lost. In the end, the stories we tell and hear about our father will not only be a celebration of his life, but a much welcome coping mechanism. With each tale comes a memory and with each memory a manifestation of the man.
So, as you might have guessed, we’re going to relate some stories and memories about our father to round out this eulogy, and we encourage those of you who have one to do the same.
Let me start, I remember going on a field trip with my father when I was in middle school. He never talked about his work at home, all we knew was that he was a teacher. But it was on this field trip to Caumsett Park that I saw a whole different side of my dad. He was taking his class on a hike through the park identifying plants, trees, and, his specialty, birds. He was not only knowledgeable, but he was also entertaining. He would identify a bird, discuss a few of its characteristics, and then, without fail, find a way to tie one of the bird’s traits to a student in his class. They loved the whole thing. It was such an effortless gift of his to teach through humor and playfulness. It’s something my father could do so well that I have been inspired by ever since.
From there my brothers and sisters, along with grand children, shared stories, many of them quite entertaining. The healing power of storytelling should never be underestimated. But the grand finale was two of his students from the 1980s at Lynbrook Middle School shared how much my father meant to them. One anecdote that was particularly powerful was how he would have nicknames for all of his students, and the gentleman sharing noted his last name was Renz, and my father called him “Renz-a-lot” and his younger brother in the grade below “Renz-a-little.” It’s hard to articulate how amazing it was to hear this unsolicited story. My father’s playful use of language to connect and commune was at the core of his very best qualities, and having the opportunity to remember this while surrounded by friends and family was a true gift. He will be missed, but I can rest assured that my children have heard the stories and they will now know to only relate the most flattering of tales at my wake 🙂
Jim, I’m so sorry for your loss — but what a comfort stories can be. I hope they stay with you — the blessing that memory should be.
Kathleen,
Thank you so much, and you are not only on a blogging tear these days, but also a commenting one. I appreciate this here, and the frame of generosity and sharing that you articulate so beautifully seems to increasingly be the the space I want to inhabit online and off. So thank you!
I’m sorry for your loss- the bittersweet memories, the pain of loss but the sweet memories. I remember that feeling from when I lost my dad 30 yrs ago.
“Stories are how an ordinary life, like our father’s, becomes extraordinary. Stories capture his sense of humor, his idiosyncrasies, and most importantly a deeper and clearer sense of the soul we’ve lost.”
It’s a beautiful eulogy, Jim. His life becomes even more extraordinary and fitting by hearing it from you. When you tell of his teaching by telling a story, it’s not hard to see him in action through your own constant teaching by telling stories. I wish peace and love to your whole family.
Jim,
Thank you so much, I know much better has been written, but the idea of writing for solace and purpose really congealed for me over the last week. Connecting over stories has been a powerful thread of resistance through a lot of the work we do, and crossing the personal and professional streams seems more and more appropriate as I am trying to make sense of what either of them means and why.
Oh Jim, this is such a generous witness to your own loss while getting us all as ever thinking—thinking about how and why we are each other’s keepers of these small cherished memories.
I loved learning that your father was a wake-goer himself, and even more a birdwatcher. Who knows what anyone is preparing themselves for, but in these pursuits we are.
Damn. Jim. I’m so sorry for your loss. What great stories to have included in his eulogy though! I can see where you got your playfulness with language. So… Do we start wake-crashing now? Is that a thing? You sonofabitch, I am IN!
Thanks D’Arcy, you’re the best. I do think there is something to celebrating each other as much as we can in the small things. The stories we get sold are all on some kind of global or national level, but I am attracted to the personal in this, i think it is why this who think made sense, a relationship through words and ideas, we’re like public penpals of the digital age. And then those shit platforms told us what to care about, how to share and like, and where to do it. The industrial elements of overshadowed the personal.But having this simple blog to share this and here from you in this context, it’s why I still believe the web is a loosely coupled series of personal relations despite all the other bullshit. Thanks for commenting, and thanks for being my blogfather, but no wakecrashing for us just yet, we still have many posts before we sleep 🙂
Kate,
Who says it better than you, “… but in these pursuits we are..” Amen, I think that is the insight I was searching for. I have been working through the everydayness of life and I am beginning to think wisdom might be the ability to recognize that as the point, in those pursuits we are…and hopefully we are together some how.
I had hopes of just commenting on blogs this week, but not thinking about this kind of post.
I saw your Flickr photos and guessed wrongly that you were visiting your Dad. Well not all wrong. Damn for the loss and blessings for the stories, that will carry him and you for a long stretch. Just like that portrait of your dad I saw in Flickr that story of him as a teacher comes as a chip off the old DNA, not a replica but a remix. Keep the fire alive.
Living for wakes, waking for living. With ya.
Alan,
You are the web detective, those images were essentially a kind of digital signage for the wake that highlighted my dad, but also some pretty wild images of my boyhood dog Thurman the house we grew up in and all sorts of other craziness. I would be watching the monitor with friends at the wake laughing hysterically at various shots, it was a nice touch to introduce so many of the old and new memories from photography, and I have a whole series of posts in my head about those photos given i spent several nights with my siblings going through old photo albums and telling all kinds of stories. It was awesome.
At the same time, I take a page out of cogdogblog with this post, given i am not nearly as practivced as you with sharing the long and profound dedications to those in your family you have loved and lost. Your willingness to use your site as a space for remembering your parents, brtoher, aunts, and more is an inspiration, so I am just following in your footsteps here, trying to keep blogging real and the idea of this as an honest space to reflect on and build relationships alive. Something you are the king of!
What a beautiful eulogy. My dad was big into obituaries himself, I can remember there was some real pressure for the family to come together and write his thinking “Damn, he could probably come up with something much better himself if he were around to do it.” Having just gone through that process less than a year and a half ago I know how bittersweet the various moments can be. You get together with family and there’s this sadness and laughter intertwined. A true mix of emotions that I know I was grateful to experience. Thinking of the whole family <3
“Tim Owens, what happened?” 🙂
You capture the experience perfectly. I laughed more than might be proper this past week, but it has been pretty much how my entire family has processed pain. Many of us are struggling with the loss of our parents these days, and I was thinking a lot about you this past week. I have come up with a pretty strict policy of WWTOD, and I imagine you would be as generous and genial as you always are—we all have our heroes, and I think my main takeaway of the last week has been to try and let those people know that. I wonder if it was those introductory videos to ds106 wherein we all introduced ourselves through stories made the bonds that would 15 years later continue to buoy me personally and professionally. This shit is real!
Jim, just reading this now as I prepare for slumber. My parent’s eulogies are in the distant past but it is never lost on me how therapeutic it was to blog about my mother’s passing 13 years on now. The non-existence of blogs when my dad passed is what it is, but I did give a eulogy for him at his funeral. Part of the story goes… “My father had a gift. It was as unique as it gets. He could see into the future. Here’s how it manifested itself. I was a serial cereal eater. Mostly Cheerios, but occasionally, ok maybe regularly the sweeter sugary coated cereals. The kinds that came with the cool free toys. Anyway, no matter what the cereal, or the toy, if my father was at the kitchen table when I opened a new box, I would ask him to say a color. Dad? Say blue. He would say blue. I would reach into the box and out would come the blue toy. If I preferred the green toy? Dad, say green. He would say green. Green toy it was. He batted 1,000. He wasn’t always perfect, but with that skill he was.”
Your memory of your father’s skill is so touching. The fog will lift and the laughs will be ever present. Sending you love!
I love those idiosyncratic elements of a person I can only know through the stories those who loved them tell. I have heard you talk about your dad many a time in the bullpen, and knowing you and I have walked the same road (though me later, cause I am much younger 🙂 ) makes it all more bearable.
Thanks Andy, you rule.
??
Should be a heart <3
I’m sorry, Jim.
You are a chip off the ol’ block for sure!
“It was such an effortless gift of his to teach through humor and playfulness. It’s something my father could do so well that I have been inspired by ever since.”
Keep being inspired. It is beautifully contagious.
Todd,
It takes a hippie to know a hippie, I think the joy you embody with your appreciation of the beauty in everything and everyone is how I want to live. Just seeing your name here makes me smile, thanks man!
So sorry for your loss, Jim. Keep speaking that bad Italian and embarrassing your kids – they’ll thank you for it one day 😉
My dad loved funerals as well – he said it always amazed him what stories were told at funerals that families had no idea about. After he retired he became a CofE reader and helped to share those stories by conducting most of the funerals at his church.
Sarah,
That’s interesting to me too, we always were perplexed by his obsession with wakes, but as I get a bit older I think I’m starting to understand why, it’s solemn but the idea of celebrating that passing with stories as ritual seems somehow essential to the human experience. Thanks for this comment and all you do to keep storytelling alive on the web.
Hi Jim, sorry for your loss. That’s a beautifully written eulogy – honest, touching and hopeful.
You see, blogging is not dead, no eulogy for the bava.blog just yet 🙂 Thanks Martin, given you can actually write I take this as a great compliment!
As someone who got her doctoral degree by literally hanging out in funeral homes and graveyards I am surprisingly terrible at funerals and wakes. Sounds like you and your family made a beautiful celebration of your father’s life even more special. Sending love to you all.
Thanks Maren,
The only thing we forgot to do was to play the entirety of The Cure’s Disintegration album throughout the service 🙂 Thanks for all the kind words and well-wishing over the last week, and glad that we are getting the blogging band back together, nothing more hopeful for me than that!
There are never words enough for loss of a loved one. Thanks for sharing a bit of him here with us.
Shannon,
Agreed with that, but sometimes word are all we have. I appreciate you commenting here, and continuing to be part of my life, you are nice! We’re like old friends now 🙂
I’m sorry to hear this. Hope you’re OK.
Hi Stephen,
Thanks for this, and I am holding up. It wasn’t necessarily a surprise, but that only blunts the disorientation so much. That said, I am doing well and having a big family and some tried and true rituals has helped considerably.
I’m very sorry for your loss Jim. Love the story of your dad sharing the joy of nature with the kids he taught and crafting them nicknames. Sharing stories is always a great comfort in times like these. Sending love ?
Thanks Lauren, you rock! Funny how things like stories, wildlife or flora analogies, and more make the process seem much more cyclical and natural. I have to think you have more than a few lessons to share in that regard from the allotment. Funny how moments like this help you re-think what’s important as the years get fewer and the days get shorter.
My heart goes out to you and your family during this time of loss.
I have been helping a close friend through the death of their Mother & Father who both passed away within a matter of months. The storytelling is Everything and the way we honour their lives and wrangle the pain of their departure.
Stay gold.
Grant
My only regret is that I could not get the Dead Moocmen to play the wake, that would have been epic 🙂 Thanks man, you are the goldest of gold, and this is the time I need a campfire and stories for sure, but what the heck, I still have this here blog and one or two tales left to tell.
Jim, I am sorry for this loss and my deepest sympathies go out to you.
Your eulogy and the way you share it is immensely moving and evidence of that gigantic heart of yours.
Brian,
You are nice, and sharing this was a bit strange while at the same time it was important because the people I commune with here are important to me, you being a big one. Thanks for your comment, and thanks for being an awesome friend over the last twenty years, you mean a lot to me.
As everyone else has said, I am also sorry for your loss. I don’t think there’s any less sting being older when a parent passes. But as Alan has pointed out, just keep sharing and sharing and sharing, and the story carries that person forward forever into the future.