This is the Speech I Wrote for My Dad’s Funeral
I have, for a long time, been fascinated with the nature of existence. How we exist, how to exist, and if one can exist better than the next. Some believe that existence ends when our bodies do. Some believe in a heaven, a hell, or both; others believe in neither, but trust that there is an elsewhere beyond the horizon for us to enter once our physical being is no longer.
In any case, our bodies somehow go back into the universe, and none of us who still have ours can truly know what lies in what is perhaps the only true great unknown. What has always drawn me to the meaning of existence, however, is not what the afterlife holds, if there is one, but what it means here on Earth, especially once someone has left us.
When you lose a limb, it’s said that you experience phantom pain. You lose an arm, yet you can still feel it where it’s supposed to be, because it’s something that you’ve always known, a part of you, vital to how you function in the world.
The absence of someone, especially someone who is just as much a part of you as an arm, or leg, or beating heart, who has built you, shaped you, loved you, raised you, is confrontational.
An empty chair at dinner. Three H’s sewn into the pockets of laundry still waiting to be washed. Finding yourself waiting for the sound of footsteps climbing up the stairs at the end of the day, only to not hear them. The reality of their absence forces you to see them in it.
This, to me, is where much of common thought on existence is flawed. The space they used to fill is said to be empty, although it now has a heaviness that it did not used to. Just as matter exists in a space that looks to be void of such, so does a person we have lost in the places where they used to be, and in the hollow weight that we carry with us.
I know, of course, that they do not occupy this space in body, and that it is just air, and my arms would run right through if I tried to grab onto them. If this person does not still exist, though, why does what we are told is empty bring such grief? Memories, emotions, dreams- all things that are real, if not tangible, although the proof of them manifests in the material world, whether in objects, actions, laughter, or tears.
One cannot be wished into physical existence, but existence cannot be measured by feet on the ground and a beating heart; existence is measured by what is left behind, including us. The fact that heaviness exists in these places, that old button ups and store-bought chairs are so significant, is, in my eyes, evidence of existence, if no longer in body.
To know the depth of loss is to know the depth of love.
This wound never goes away, we only learn how to let the world spin again without them also breathing in it. While I wish my father were here, and that a shirt was still just a shirt or a chair still just a chair, it’s heartbreak of this nature that proves to me that love is real and it’s everything that matters.
It’s how to exist better, exist more, really exist at all. And he was love, and so much more, and this is how I know he was real. Is real, as real as the Earth underfoot. He exists in the stories we tell about him and the stories he told us, in his interests, his brilliance, his never-ending thirst for knowledge, and in the lessons he has imparted on those around him- morals of hard work, resilience, and what it means to be a family.
When we exist in love, the love we leave behind continues to still hold us close. It’s in this love that we will forever and always hold my father in our hearts.
