Eulogy For My Father
Forgive and Forget
I guess you could say that my dad chose to learn lessons the hard way. He had the soul of a rebel, even saying to us recently that “If someone says I can’t do something, that’s exactly what I want to do. I may have had no interest in it the minute before they said that, but now, it’s all I want to do.” Although that’s really not my style, I have thought a lot this past week about lessons learned the hard way, and it occurs to me that that approach, while fraught with anxiety and pain, produces the lessons that stick with you, the lessons that truly teach you, the lessons that change you.
My dad’s life was a redemption story if ever there was one. He spent so many years of his life in selfish pursuit, running from his pain, trying to put on a ferocious front in order to overpower it, drowning himself in anything that would make that pain go away. When none of it worked, he picked up a phone in a phone booth in Los Angeles and said what he thought was goodbye to the last person he felt connected to. In that moment of surrender and desperation, he was finally saved. I will forever owe a debt of gratitude for that night. It is because of a phone call steeped in faith and forgiveness that I am able to stand before you today, full of love for my father. On that night he was changed, and for the final 19 years of his life, he was redeemed. He is dancing in…
