A Eulogy From A Daughter

by Nora McGowan

The last time I talked to my dad he told me not to worry. With a smile on his face, he said that he thinks he will live 25 more years, and he will watch me grow up, go to college, get a job,walk me down the aisle, and meet my grandchildren.

I automatically did the math and figured out that in 25 years I would be 40 years old.

For the rest of the day I tried to wrap my head around the fact that there would come a time that I would have to walk on this Earth and live my life knowing that my dad was not there. It was too painful to imagine, and I hoped that somehow I would be able to gather the strength within the next 25 years to bear it when that day would come.

Little did I know when I woke up 2 days later my whole life as I knew it would never be the same.

Before I talk more about myself, it is important that everyone knows who my dad was, and how he was no ordinary person who you walk by on the street. My dad was someone who was everything; smart, kind, generous, loving, hilarious, athletic, understanding, and basically every other positive adjective that you can think of.

I sometimes wondered how I could be his daughter, because I was so ordinary and normal. I was never as outgoing or charismatic as my dad (although I don’t think anybody really was). But my dad was someone who was just a little above everyone else, meaning that you couldn’t help but respect him no matter what he said.

He could say something that was wrong or incorrect (not that he ever did), but as soon as he said it, it became right.

Because of this, at an early age to make it my life goal to make my dad proud. I always pushed myself to impress him in any way I could. In school I would work my hardest in everything I did for the day that I could walk up to my dad with my report card and he would smile and say “good job.” Whenever I told a joke and my dad laughed, I felt so honored and important. Music, sports, any activity I did I made sure that when dad was watching I would be at my absolute finest.

There was one thing though that was never a question if my dad would be there, and that was the Conard-Hall Warchiefs hockey games. My dad made it his top priority the past 2 years of my life to never ever miss a Warchiefs game. It became one of his number one goals for the Warchiefs to win the state championship. Every game my sister and I had a long paragraph text message to pump us up on the bus ride there, and a reflection on the positives and what we could work on, on the bus ride home.

However, as fun as it was to watch the game and cheer with the parents, I realized just recently while reading over those texts, that the reason my dad loved it so much was because of the joy that it brought me and my sister.

After we beat the number one team, me and Eily could not stop smiling for the longest time, and neither could my dad. He always said that sports are a metaphor for life, and in one of his reflection texts he said sports can prepare you to be a good student, a good spouse, a good parent, a good neighbor, and even a good patient.

When I said that I would be speaking today, many people told me to think of some good memories to share. There were so many to choose from that I didn’t know where to begin.

I thought back to the fun times like all the vacations that we took all around the world, the times we spent at our beach house in Weekapaug, fun times with relatives, my spectacular trip to China for my 13th birthday, and all the other privileges that he worked so hard to provide for us.

While I could go on for hours describing those times, I realized that my favorite thing to do with my dad was simply just to talk. Whatever possible topic I could think of, my dad was like a living encyclopedia that had experience to back up any answer to the countless questions my siblings and I would ask him.

We could talk for hours and hours. In fact, talking with my dad was one of my favorite pastimes. He would sometimes just come in my room and lay on my bed, and one by one every member of the family would pile in until we were all present. Unfortunately with our busy lives that didn’t happen as often as I would have liked it to.

My favorite parts of the year were the trips we would take during April break, usually to Florida, California, or to other cool places. Many would think that as a kid, and now teenager, I loved it because I got to go to the beach and take cool pictures, eat out at fancy places, and that kind of thing.

That stuff was nice, but the real reason I liked to take vacations was because it was a time where our whole family was always together, hanging out with each other and no one else. We were not spread out in our separate rooms, but in one hotel room, or eating dinner at one table, where we could talk all we wanted.

Another activity that was one of my favorites was watching movies together. We would watch all kinds of movies in our Trinity room as a family. The last movie that we ever watched together was To Kill a Mockingbird. My dad seemed to really like it. It’s kind of funny that that was the last movie we ended up watching together because if there was one person that I could compare my dad to it would probably be Atticus, the father in the story.

Atticus was a well respected man in the town, and he always did what was right no matter what others thought. He also always made it a priority to give his children, whom he loved so much, all kinds of advice. In those ways I find him very similar to dad.

I have referenced all these privileges that my dad gave my family, and I would just like to mention that all of this was due to his hard work. My dad did not grow up with fancy vacations, a beach house, or a swimming pool. His childhood was a little more stressful in the financial area.

My siblings and I never took the opportunities he gave us for granted. He sacrificed so much to give me and the rest of my family the life we have, and he spread so much generosity to anyone he knew.

A few days ago I received a letter from my dad, written on my 5th birthday, to open upon his death. In that letter he said:

“I will probably be most frequently described as ‘generous’. While it is true I have been pretty decent in my financial affairs, it should be noted that I have never really measured generosity in financial terms.

I have never valued money more than it was worth — it buys things and can lessen stress (which is very important to me as my father seemed to struggle with money in my youth).

But my own view of generosity is not inconsistent—meaning that I do hope I am generous— however, I view it differently. I love people. I believe I always have been interested in liking people and having them like me. In this way, I believe I am generous because I believe I can easily see the good (read: God) in people.

Despite my loud verbal compensations, to the contrary I am forgiving of nearly any human deficiency that has ever been defined.

I’d like to think that I am generous of heart, or spirit.”

While I am on the topic of that note that he wrote to me, I would like to point out that although it was written over 10 years ago, it felt as though he was talking to me as I read it last Sunday.

I was only turning 5 at the time he wrote it, feeling sorry that he was stuck in Denver, Colorado for work during my birthday. But it was as though we had known each other for years. He described me as the exact person I am today, which makes me think that somehow he knew the whole time what was going to happen and when.

Another peculiar detail that I noticed in the letter, was that he said that he never feared death and that he would be happily reuniting with Uncle Paul, Grampy, Grampa, Grandma, and other whom he has missed. The thing was that, at the time he wrote the letter 10 years ago, Grandma (his mother) was still alive and healthy, until her death about 3 years later. Makes you wonder.

I do not really understand why God took this wonderful man out of my life, but since his death I have felt different than I ever have before.

It is almost as though I can feel his love even more than I could when he was on Earth. I am sure that he is there, here in this room right now, or wherever I go. It is like this supernatural feeling that I can’t quite describe.

At times when I feel hurt or pain it is like this reinforcement that enters me and somehow causes me to be happy when I normally would be sad.

I have been thinking about how I am going to get by without him, because for one thing I have always been a terrible decision maker. I still do not know how I am going to decide what college to go to or what job I want, but one of the last pieces of advice my dad told me was, “No decision is the right decision, choose one and make it right.”

As a person I have always been unsure of myself. I don’t usually like to draw attention to myself, or ever exit my comfort zone. But when my dad died it was almost like that part of me that felt missing, that extra confidence that I always desired, was there.

Maybe it was God who wanted to give me something to help get through. I also thought that maybe, as my family suggested, that when my dad died, part of him was divided and distributed to each of us.

But also in my letter my dad said, “love is not relative, it is absolute. There is not a fixed amount of love to be divided- you can love many people completely (100%).”

I like to think that as my dad went to heaven each one of us got all of his good qualities, they were not divided, but they rest infinitely in all of our souls.

Nevertheless, I feel as though I can now do things that I never have before. If someone had told me a week ago that I would be sharing my thoughts and reading in front of hundreds of people I would not have believed them in a million years.

But I am not the same person I was a week ago.

I have lost and I have gained. I am not someone who is afraid, I am not someone who feels defeated.

I am someone, and I speak for all of my siblings, I am someone who has so many loving friends, relatives, a mother who loves us with her whole heart and more, and most importantly I am someone who has an angel in heaven, an angel that I call dad.

I have someone to watch from above, and cheer me on every minute of every day.

Everyone has been telling me that they are sorry for my loss, and I know that many people feel sad for me and my family. The hugs that I received from relatives and the texts I received from friends really did fill a hole in my heart that had just been opened, and I really am thankful for that.

But I want everyone to know that the more I think about it, the more lucky I feel that I got to spend 15 years with the most magnificent father.

And I think that everyone here should feel more lucky than sad, because if you are here today that means that you have a connection to someone who was like no other. Someone who was larger than life.

And I would not trade that for anything.