Last updated on 8 December 2020
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When the heart weeps for what it has lost,
the soul laughs for what it has found.
-Sufi aphorism
I am in your apartment right now. I walk
On the same carpet you did not
So long ago. I pace a neat collection of
Rooms designed for expedience and
Efficiency.
I sit in your easy chair, modern
And blue. I feel how you sat and looked out
The window, always going to deeper places
We could not always see.
I lie in your bed. It is the last place I saw you
Alive and…dead. You were so peaceful in your
Permanent sleep and I did not despair for
You any longer because I know you went the
Way you wanted to.
You always wanted it your way. Even when you
Couldn’t, that’s how it had to be.
You looked at me one last time that Sunday night, I think
It was to say “good-bye, my son.” But I could be
Wrong or I might be reading more into it because
It would be a convenient and nice idea. It helps me to
Think your last closing of the light was
Peaceful.
How do we memorialize a life of so many parts,
Yours included? How do we put fairly into
Nicely wrapped words all that you were, as if
We were to hand out gifts that were you?
It is said death ends a life, not a relationship and if that
Is true, you are so many things because of
So many relationships. Like facets on the face
Of a diamond, you gleamed and cut differently with
Each person you touched.
You “are” still these things, though we will never
Speak again. You are
A brother/brother-in-law.
An uncle.
A father.
A grandfather.
A former step-father.
A friend.
You are all those things still because your relationships
With people at the other end lingers.
You were also a lover of music
And of poetry. Your muses were Borges, Maria, Oliver
And Cohen, among others.
You wanted to be both poet
And conductor—I have seen the pictures.
You wanted to matter in some way,
Most of all. To that I can confirm
That you succeeded because we feel
Your absence. There is space between us
Now that we gather in the forest by the
River where Elin and I married. We feel you looking down from that step
And smiling because you knew you succeeded
At least with me.
And you live on in the
Words you wrote, humbly, sometimes with humor
And always with a deliberateness of the well chosen.
You will linger on in pages you wrote
And in the hearts of those who gather. And that is
A pretty good thing.
-Eulogy for John Russell Ward
eulogy/n/: a commendatory oration or writing especially in honor of one deceased