Thursday, March 25, 2010

Eulogy

Here are the words I spoke about my dad at his funeral:

My dad was the funniest guy that I knew. He taught me that when times get really bad, laughter can be the best medicine. And although he knows how sad we are, he would want us all to be laughing instead of crying right now. That is why I would like to share some of the funniest things I can remember about my dad.
I’ll always remember him dancing. I called him twinkle toes. After he would have a few drinks and get on the dance floor, he was such a riot to watch. Everyone would kind of stop dancing and just watch him.

He developed his own dictionary of words over the years. Some words included: bunky, a rande grande, shower back, and a shot of attitude.

When I was little, I was a naughty kid. But I was fast. And when my dad would try to spank me, I would take off running. He could never catch me. I would be running around the block just screaming and crying, and my dad would be running behind me as fast as he could huffing and puffing. I always beat him, but I always knew what was waiting for me when I got home. Most of the time, I would get home and he was cooled off enough that I would just get a good talking too.

When we were kids, he would put out a dummy on the front porch weeks before Halloween. When Halloween would come, he would put the clothes on, and sit very still until a trick or treater rang the door bell. Then he would jump up and scare the crap out of them. We would sit inside the house and just watch and laugh.

When I was about ten, he decided he was going to wax the car. He had a navy blue Grand Prix. He put all of the wax on the car, and when he went to wipe it off, it would’t come off. He looked at the wax, and realized he had used furniture polish instead of car wax. He had to drive all the way through town with big wax swirls on his car, and have Gustman’s buff it out for him.

When the Packers went to the Superbowl, my mom sent him to the store for something. 15 minutes later the phone rang, and it was my dad saying he was at the store, and someone stole the car. He was all in a panic, and said the cops were on their way. He was asking my mom what the license plates on the car were. Just then my dad looked down at his keys and realized he had the Blazer and not the car. He found the Blazer sitting in the parking lot, and booked it out of there before the police arrived.

Through my dad’s illness, I was fortunate enough that his friends and family would sit and share funny and touching stories of him growing up. Like how he use to outrun the cops on his snowmobile, or how he wore a leopard print shirt and he thought he was such a stud, or how he would give his brothers a kick in the butt when they needed it and a pat on their backs when they didn’t deserve it.

My dad never lost his sense of humor. And even though there were a lot of tears at times, he was my dad right up to the very end and had all of us in stitches laughing. I can only hope that when families have to deal with this dreadful disease that they can smile and laugh as much as we did through it all.

His outlook on death was just amazing. Even the hospice workers said it was very rare to have a patient like him. He would call and tell people that “he just found out he wasn’t going to be in this world much longer.” Or when he would swear he would say “he better stop swearing because he was going to heaven soon.” And when he would start crying, he assured us that he was crying for us, and not for him – that he knew he was going to a better place.

I know I am going to miss him like crazy, but I find so much peace knowing that he is up in heaven with so many great people that he hasn’t seen for so long. And he doesn’t have any more tubes or drains, and he is Cancer free. The world is a poorer place without my dad in it - but heaven is all the richer.

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