It’s been almost three years now, and I never wrote a eulogy for my mom. Part of that is born of the simple fact that she really hasn’t died, she regularly sits at my dining room table with me drinking bad coffee and smoking endless cigarettes. And talking, talking, talking, talking. She lines every post and inspires every act of defiance and refusal I can muster.
So, in order to honor the importance of legacy and remembrance—however one chooses to express it—I wanted to link to Mike Caulfield’s post/eulogy for his father, the late Arther E. Caulfield. On top of that, I’d also like to add how deeply sorry we are for his loss here at the bava. Here’s to all the conversations you will have with him from here on out.
Eight years for my grandmother.
She helps with the quilting and the cooking.
Hey Jim … I know it can’t be easy. I did jump over and read Mike’s post. Heartfelt and real. I haven’t experienced your loss — and my parents just showed up to spend the night. I look at them each time I see them and try to plug into their lives so deeply. Finding the right words is sometimes impossible and yet we want so badly to say what is really going on. At any rate, thanks for the post.
Thank you so much Jim.
I am with you, I am not sure there will ever be a point in my life where I will stop having conversations in my head with him. I go on just the same as I have, collecting things I want to hash out on the phone with him, except now I have to imagine the response alone. Weird.
As I just said to Scott Leslie, the most helpful thing in all this has been finding out that so many people I know have gone through this — it’s odd how before it happens you just never even realize the existence of this experience in others, you’re blind to it, it’s just another piece of history, like where they went to school. Then it happens, and there’s something so incredibly comforting in the experience being so common.
So thank you very much for sharing, and linking to the eulogy, (which I should mention I suppose was a joint eulogy that I composed with my siblings for the Mass.)
But thanks very much, I appreciate it more than you can know — or perhaps more accurately, I appreciate in a way I am sure you *do* know.