"The Eulogy"

Glen Acres Cemetery is a large graveyard where Dad's plot was chosen, next to my grandparents and great grandparents. Everybody in the Stokes family for the last three generations has been buried here, and for a long time I assumed I would be to. Now, I'm not so sure. I didn't seem to be welcome with my family while I was alive, anymore. I wasn't sure if I'd be welcome when I was dead.

The group of people around Dad's plot is large. He had, of course, been a particularly influential and generally likeable man, at least to most people. He had a lot of friends and even more business associates, and it seemed that almost everyone who had ever once spoken "hello" to him is here. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this. For some reason, Dad's death seems like it was meant to be private, even though he was often in the public eye. Maybe I just don't want anyone else to see what our family has hidden for so long, our disfunctionality under such a perfect mask of the all American family. I don't know.

Everyone is quiet while the minister speaks. A good deal of people in the crowd cry, but out of our family the only one to shed tears is Lilly. I almost want to make myself cry just so someone else near her is, so our family looks like we're in the proper state of grieving, but I just can't, not yet. I played best in our all American family, after all. Real men don't cry.

I can't make my eyes moisten but I also can't seem to take them off of the pine box that I know Dad's body is in. I know what a dead body looks like. Even the best make up artist can't make a dead person look asleep, not to me. And I know what that body will look like in about a week. I know all about the process of decay.

I try not to imagine my father rotting and fail. I don't want to remember him like that.

I don't know if I want to remember any of this. I want to put it all behind me. I want it to already be gone.

I have to get through it first.

The minister announces me as the son giving the eulogy and I don't move for a minute, very suddenly wishing that I had also argued that Richard take this burden, that I wasn't the good son anymore. I don't want to be here anymore, and I don't know what to say.

I make myself move slowly up to where the minister stands. He gives me what he probably believes is a comforting hand on my shoulder and backs away so I am alone in front of the crowd and the box.

The box that the body is in.

Dad is inside the box.

I remember Luke asking me how I was doing and my telling him it didn't feel real yet, as if it hadn't really happened, but now Dad's lying dead hidden by a large box of wood, and suddenly the denial and disbelief have all but vanished. The reality has set in. This isn't some big nightmare, even though it's felt like nothing else since my plane landed in Texas. This is real. This is happening.

Dad is dead.

I hear someone clear their throat and I tear my eyes away from the coffin with an effort. I try to get my thoughts together and I notice Luke staring at me strangely, maybe wondering why I didn't have it all together like I always did. I make myself not look at him either. This is hard enough as it is.

I close my eyes for a minute and begin to speak, thinking maybe if I can't see the other people, then this will somehow be easier. "I had a conversation with my sister earlier that reminded me of Dad, for some reason. Years ago, when I just become a cop, green as a blade of grass, I was assigned to this case where a young woman had been raped and murdered behind a supermarket somewhere. "

I hear a stir of unease at such a disturbing topic being brought up at a funeral and I open my eyes. Mom, in particular, is glaring at me as if the first words out of my mouth were supposed to have been, 'Dad was my hero'. I ignore her and them, knowing suddenly that this has nothing to do with anyone else here.

"I was telling Dad about the case, about how badly she had been beaten, and who could do such a thing, how could people be so cruel. I hadn't ever seen anything quite like what this woman had gone through and I didn't know quite how to deal with it yet. I asked my father how could someone do something like that to someone so good, so innocent, and my Dad stopped me right there. He wanted to know exactly how I knew this woman, this victim, had been innocent or good. He asked, how did I know she wasn't a terrible woman who had done awful things in her life? How did her being a victim of a horrible crime necessarily transcribe her to sainthood?"

"I thought that was a terrible thing to say, making her sound like she had deserved what she had endured. I thought he didn't have any right to speak ill of the dead. When I told him this, Dad said he'd rather have someone speak ill truths of him than sweet sounding lies. I was so angry. I promised him I'd tell all the awful truths I could think of when I was standing at his funeral, and he smiled then and said 'Good'. It's funny. I think that was one of the only times Dad and I ever argued about anything serious, really. But I also think that's why I'm the one standing here today, giving his eulogy. Not because I'm the most loved son or the eldest son, or even the son who has always taken care of the family business. Dad wanted me to give his eulogy because he knew I wouldn't forget that I promised to tell the truth. I promised I wouldn't spin our usual sweet sounding lies."

I look at Jennifer then and she stares back at me, an intent look on her face. My eyes shift to Mom. Her eyes are narrowed into slits and she's ever so subtly shaking her head, as if warning me not to say what I was going to. I look back to the coffin.

"Dad wasn't perfect," I say. "He wasn't a bad man but he wasn't a great one, either. He worked hard for a living, helped support a wife and seven children, went to church, and believed firmly in things like justice and truth. He didn't believe things like that were concepts, airy ideas for people to pull apart and analyze as relative. He thought justice and truth and love and freedom were all real, solid things, made of black and white and forming the cornerstones of our lives. Dad was an idealistic man, a man who wanted great things and tried to achieve them with as much effort as he could summon, sometimes more. Dad tried to be the best man he could be. He was a good man. But he wasn't perfect."

"He worked hard for a living but he also worked longer hours than he should of, neglecting things that needed to be dealt with away from his career. He was nice and friendly but he did have a temper and it didn't usually take a lot to set that temper off. He loved his family, his wife and children, but he didn't love all his children equally, not the way the ideal parent is supposed to. I guess I was the lucky one, really. I was the favorite son, the good son. I usually pleased him. And I wanted to please him, I wanted him to think the world of me. There was a long time in my life when not a lot mattered to me but making my father happy. And when that wish wasn't as strong, wasn't the all-consuming desire it had been before, I still wanted to make people happy, and I surrogated others as my father figure, trying to have them believe in me the same way my father used to. That, of course, didn't always work, and it took me a long time to figure out that while it's good for other people to like you, you have to learn to be proud of yourself. And I did that. In Vegas."

I take a deep breath. David and Marianne actually have their hands on Mom, as if to keep her from springing at me. I lock my eyes on my mother's face and keep them there, wishing to see something behind that surfacing venom.

"I hadn't talked to Dad in a long time," I say, my eyes still on my mother's face. "I wanted to but I didn't. I couldn't come when Dad needed me and I allowed others to keep me away when I should have taken the first plane out, not caring about what people said. I can't use that excuse anymore. I should have come, even if nobody welcomed me. I wish. . .I wish I could have seen Dad before he left us. I wish I had flown here, now that he's gone. Because Dad didn't have to be perfect for me to love him, or for any of you to love him. All of you, you're thinking of the good times that you and Dad shared together, those moments that make you sad that he's gone. But the truth is, Dad wasn't like that all the time. He wasn't perfect. I know there were times when Dad just pissed you guys off."

There is a nervous laughter in the crowd and I know I have hit a few people, at least. I take my eyes away from my mother's face and finally allow them to look at Luke. He is staring at me as if he's never seen me before.

"The thing is, even though you have those memories that you're trying to avoid, those moments in your mind where Dad wasn't the great man that he was supposed to be but just a total jackass like all of us can be sometimes, that doesn't mean you didn't love Dad, or that he wasn't worthy of your love. Love isn't about perfection. It can't be, otherwise you wouldn't have anybody to love or depend upon. Everybody has faults and quirks and oddities. Everybody makes mistakes. Dad made his, I've made mine, and I'm sure y'all have made a few from time to time. Maybe you're even angry at someone right now whose made a mistake, someone whose done something to hurt. Now, you may have the right to never speak to that person again, and that's your decision, of course, but if you really do love them, if you really, honestly love them, then let it go. Let it go because forgiveness can be a beautiful thing and not something easily gotten from a pine box."

I pause and let my eyes linger on Luke's face a second longer before they find their way back to the coffin again. I imagine Dad again, the way I had seen him as a child, tall and larger than life, the way he is now, lying dead in that coffin. I begin to speak again as the I feel that quiet, piercing regret surge through me, and my voice cracks for the first time since I began the eulogy.

"Dad wasn't perfect but I loved him. And I wasn't perfect but Dad loved me. And I'm sorry, Dad, I'm really, really sorry. I should have come and I didn't. I wish I could change it. I wish I could change a lot of things. But I can't and I hope you can forgive me and be at peace, wherever you are." My eyes sting a bit but I don't cry and I close my eyes in prayer. "Amen," I say and silently leave the platform with no further ending. As the pastor begins to speak again, I notice a good deal of the crowd is silent, looking more perplexed than moved, but everyone in my family is crying, except, of course, Mom.

I decide that getting my throat ripped out isn't on my list of things to do and go to stand by Luke instead, who is swallow reflexively, as if working very hard on not letting any more tears fall out. I pretend to look at the ground while surreptiously glancing at him out of the corner of my eye, and ask, "You okay, man?"

"Yeah," he says. "Yeah, I'll be okay." He laughs a dry laugh that you can somehow still hear his tears in. "That was some eulogy."

"Well, I always was one hell of a public speaker."

Luke laughs again and he rubs his eyes vigorously. He looks at me, then down at the ground and says quietly, "I missed you, man."

"I missed you, too," I say and hug him, abandoning any false pretense of "manly appearances". We hold there for a second and then Luke steps back, seeming worried.

"Does it seem wrong to you that Dad had to die for us to talk to each other again?" Luke asks me. I immediately shake my head.

"No. I think Dad would be happy. His death wasn't useless, or, at least, he wouldn't have considered it to be so. He used to worry that his death would mean nothing, that it would be just some inconsequential thing."

"I didn't know that."

"It was just this thing I remember," I say. "It's not important."

We stand silently together for awhile while the minister finishes up the ceremony. I know that things aren't perfect between us again but I think that's okay. That was the whole point of the eulogy, after all. Love isn't about perfection.

The ceremony winds down and slowly people begin to drop flowers on Dad's coffin. I'm not the first or the last to drop my own rose. I just walk up and let them go. "I love you, Dad," I tell him and hope that he can hear somewhere, wherever he actually is.

Never crying and not speaking, I leave the cemetery and Dad's body behind.