eulogy

Last updated on 8 December 2020

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