Eulogy to my father

I was up early the day after Dad died. It was a glorious morning, and as I watched the sun come up, I wondered how many times it had risen on him. I worked it out. It happened 32,087 times. He lived on this planet for 87 years, ten months and four days. What a long life. He was a lucky man in many ways, but more that; he was a good man, and a generous one.

He was a man who took the bad times, and the good, and treated them the same way - by making the best of them. He had a gratitude for the good, and an optimism that something positive would come out of the bad. Even the hardest blows, like discovering that his premature baby daughter might not survive, and would be badly damaged if she did, he saw as part of a greater plan - a plan that was designed by a mind far bigger than his.
I can see him now, on a very bad day in 1958. They had taken us to stay at Cullercoats, just to get us away from home, and he came to our bedside and prayed with us kids, asking God to make Joanna live. He was distraught, it was one of the three times I saw tears in his eyes, but he had a faith in God that was deep and abiding and it never left him. For him, faith could move mountains. Even when Mum died, it kept him strong. One morning not long after that, I went to see him, and he told me that he'd been telling God off, for taking her away. He had damp eyes, but there was a smile on his face. He loved her more than anything, but he surprised us in the way he dealt with her loss. I’d wondered how he would manage, but he did, and he did it admirably. He made his life meaningful with art and music, religion, and visiting people who were lonely. He was about 80, and used to make us laugh when he said he’d been to see the ‘OLD’ people, He did that quite often, and for some reason that I never understood, he always took bananas for them. Most people take grapes, but those who knew him, will know that Dad had his own ways.

He was an active, athletic man when he was young, and seemed as big as a house to me. He seemed so for a long time. Of course as I grew up, there was rivalry between us. We didn’t often see ‘eye to eye’ back then. He was the alpha male, and I was the cocky whipper snapper who resented being told what I ought to do. When I was about twenty five, we went to the Lake District to go climbing, and to my shame, just to wind him up, I picked a route up Helvellan that was ridiculously hard. Nobody goes that way, straight up the side of the corrie. It was a hot August day and we started up the precipitous slope. Streaming with sweat, he took it on, climbed thousands of feet of scree, and grinned when we got to the top. He Must have been fifty five, and he wasn’t beaten at all. We laughed and took some photographs up there. He knew I was trying to show him he wasn’t top dog anymore, but somehow, I hadn’t quite managed it. He loved taking pictures, and he loved his cameras. Even when he was eighty, he hiked right across Simonside, taking photos. Yes, he WAS big in many ways, especially in his heart, and now, I would be proud if I was more like him.

Fifty odd years ago, he used to come to his children’s bedside every night and make the sign of the cross on our foreheads with his thumb. The other day as he lay dying, I made that same sign on his forehead. He was far gone, but I hope he noticed.