Skip to main content

Now, before it's too late

About a year and a half ago, I had the terrible and unwanted honor to write my father-in-law's eulogy.  I didn't even mean to write it, not really, I just did what I always do when everything seems overwhelming and impossibly heavy: I wrote.  It is what I have always done; I tried to capture the scattered wash of feelings and organize them into something that seems to make sense to me.  It was not my intention to write what would ultimately become his eulogy that night, I had no claim to that;  I just wrote and shared it with his family, all of them more scattered and devastated than I was, and they wanted me to read it at his funeral mass.

It was... difficult.

I have been thinking of him a lot recently, partly because Father's Day has just passed, and partly because we miss him terribly still, his absence comes up in unexpected ways, even still, and I find myself shocked again, and for a minute I have to blink my eyes hard, act like I'm OK...

The other day, I found myself wishing I had a chance to read it to him.  Not because he didn't know how we all felt about him, because he had to have known that he was loved immensely, that he was appreciated and cherished.  Holding back feelings is not a problem my extended family generally has.  I just thought it was a nice testament to a life well lived, and maybe it would have made him smile, made him give me a hug, maybe it would have

I think he would have liked to hear what I wrote.  I think he would have liked what I wrote after it was too late.

Damn, Eddie.

Damn.

This world can be cruel and cold and unflinchingly, impossibly difficult. And I wish there was more time.

So.

It is in this spirit that, for my next trick, I fully intend to eulogize people that I love, people that have had an impact on my life, people that are still alive, that might be able to smile and give me a hug still, now, before it is too late.  I do not intend this to be as grim as it sounds.  I swear it is an expression of my love and appreciation.

Maybe I better ask first, see if people would be uncomfortable to be publicly eulogized while they are still alive.

Nah.

Look out people, treat me too well, you might find your name here, and have my love for you exposed on the least private place on the face of the earth.

Bless.

Still Writing,

RP

Oh, and I'm now on Facebook (gross!), and have started an Antiartists page there for news and updates and thoughts and other nonsense.  Check me out, like my stuff (as if you don't already).
 Also the usual: Twitter @RDPullins, email dissent dot within at gmail dot com, comment here if you wanna.  Cheers!   

Comments

  1. Funny but I don't think we need to tell each other how much we love each other. It's sooo there and sooo known. My heart aches for my children and I do believe they know how much I love them. If not, well just know it now. I don't care if you eulogize me but know I know and I know you know!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I thought I would start with people that I don't tell that I love them a few times a week, so immediate family is out for now. Don't worry.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

We Would Be a Song

I seem to define my life with soundtracks, playlists that encompass epochs or periods of change or development.  My earliest music was my mother's: Van Halen and Judas Priest, Def Leppard and AC/DC.  I remember a friend of hers explaining to second grade Ralph that the big balls that Angus was singing about were parties, but even then I didn't buy it.  My teen years were heavy on grunge, Nirvana and Alice in Chains and Soundgarden, and that was the first time that music ever felt like it was mine , that I discovered by myself or through the radio, or like minded friends, that was the first time that I took it and owned it and loved it, and even now I'll hear Black Hole Sun or Rooster or Smells Like Teen Spirit on the radio and back I go. In the fifth grade, I moved to Kelso, Washington. I want to say that it was hard, but what I remember mostly from childhood is just this sense of taking every day as it arrived.  What else do we have except our own experiences to measure th

The Terrible Darkness

Out there in the darkness, something is circling us. something cold, something terrible.  It circles us, and sometimes, it takes one of us. Punks tend to have a short lifespan. We die early, through overdose or violence, through neglect or disease.  And we die of suicide. It happens. Way too often, it happens. It is patient, this terrible thing, it waits.  We huddle together around the light we created for one another. The thing hates the light, but there is just too much darkness, and the terrible thing whispers, and sometimes, one of us, we listen. We come to punk in self defense; in many ways it is a reaction, a response to a hostile and uncaring world.  Hardly anybody comes to punk as an adult. You don't come to punk because you are well adjusted . You come to punk because you're fucked up. You're fucked up and angry and young, and then you hear a song, and the sound sounds like you feel, and the words speak like you feel, and you realize that someone out t

End/Beginning of the Year House Cleaning

So its been a while huh?  Usually if I spend a long time away from writing, it is because I am either feeling pretty content, or because I have been busy. In this case it is both. I have been busy, both with the holidays and related events, and with the pay job, and also I have been working on a super secret surprise mystery project that I am not quite ready to talk about, but it is cool as hell and I'm stoked to bring it out and wave it around and harass my family and friends to tell me what they think and to tell everyone that they have ever met to check it out. But that is later. It is 2018, folks. Twenty. Eighteen. Since I am so behind in everything, I figured I would just blob everything together in one big-ass beginning of the year/end of the year rant/review/announcement pile of words and see where it goes.  Let's just jump in shall we? --  Unbelievable, but I'm turning forty years old in August, an age that I wasn't sure I was ever going to see, and one that I