Camilla’s Eulogy for Dad
My earliest memory of love is the way my dad would cut up fruit for our breakfast bowls each morning. Our granola would be garlanded in slices of strawberry and banana, with a cascade of blueberries tossed in. This was how dad loved: with small acts of daily devotion. Perhaps it was because he paid attention to these small things that he was a relentlessly positive person — he was able to see the good in everything because he went looking for it (and could find it anywhere.)
He loved being in motion — dashing down the mountain on skis or coasting over a ridge on his bike — but he was also the one who taught me how to be still. One of my favorite traditions was arriving in New Hampshire together late at night and, after the car was unloaded, standing out on the dock to look at the constellations. The gentle glow of stars pooled onto the surface of the lake. We would stand next to each other in silent awe, absorbing the vast beauty around us.
There are so many memories.
The winter evening he pulled the car right to the edge of the lake so that we could skate on its frozen surface, lit by headlights and serenaded by the car stereo.
The long, ponderous walks we would take together — a sacred space in which anything could be revealed without judgment.
The song lyrics he could remember from his youth and the utter glee that ran through him when a favorite song would start playing that he hadn’t heard in a long time.
The way he would wake me up for school by throwing open my shades and loudly singing the 1918 army hit “you’ve got to get up, you’ve got to get up, you’ve got to get up in the morning!! Some day I’m going to murder the bugler, some day they’re going to find him dead! You’ve got to get up, you’ve got to get up, you’ve got to get up in the morning!!”
The way he would start to speak in a Cockney accent if he had to say something uncomfortable
All of this has felt impossible. Every time I sat down to write this, the only thing I could think was how much I wished I didn’t have to write a eulogy for my dad.
In the hospital, it felt impossible to stay in that sterile room, facing death and it felt equally impossible to leave, slowly shifting his warm hand out of mine as we said goodbye.
Today it feels impossible to stand here and acknowledge that he’s gone and also impossible to let go of the grief of his passing, because that grief is the closest I can be to him right now. All of these things feel impossible and yet they have happened, are happening. What dad has taught me in his last chapter is that we can do even this. He showed us all that, buoyed by love, we have the courage to do what seems utterly impossible.
A sentence from the book I was reading while dad was in the hospital has stuck with me: “I was learning to sit quietly in the midst of howling winds and wait to see what constructive action was being asked of me.” We have had to sit in the storm of ALS, of his rapid decline. What is being asked of us now? What does love want, now?
My dad lived his dream life. For someone who was asleep to his ALS diagnosis and for a long time and didn’t want to face it (who can blame him) he was completely awake to how much he loved his existence and all of us. We, his family, were his dream. My dad was a man who lived his dream in daily acts of devotion — to his wife, his children, to his parents, siblings, and dear friends, and to the trees and mountains that will always know his name.
In the days after he passed, I found something beautiful in a stack of papers. While prepping his Christmas present one year, I had hurriedly folded a scrap of wrapping paper in half, written his name on it, and taped it to his gift. On the inside of the paper I wrote “To Dad, I love you so much. Thank you for being my dad.” He saved this note for 20 years.
There were so many gifts that my dad gave me in his illness and passing.
Thank you for being my dad, then, now, and always and forever.
