I’m not sure this is the appropriate place for this, but I’m off fb and a lot of people asked me to share it, especially for those who couldn’t be present.
I hope I can do this without falling apart, because my dad deserves to be celebrated. He led an amazing life. He was a great man—a great person, kind, generous, patient, really smart. A lot of people in this room would tell you he’s the smartest person they ever met. When I was a kid, before the earth was surrounded by satellites like it is now, he came up with a way to bounce telecommunications off approaching meteors to reach people on the other side of the world. He invented a battery-powered heating element for his skates so he could play hockey without his feet going numb. He developed a fleet of networked, “smart” mousetraps, over a dozen at this point across three states. The “Vaccuumouse 2000”. He was amazing at chess—the only person I know who could beat him consistently was his brother Dan.
As he got older, and people he loved started getting sick—his mother and father, his sister Dina, my mom’s sister Patty, and finally Dana himself—he became a patient advocate. He took in a colossal volume of information about how the human body works, the cutting edge of medicine, cancer, the heart, lungs, and brain, more than any of us could keep up with, to the point that we all thought ahead to a time when he wouldn’t be able to speak for himself and wondered how we could ever live up to the standard he set.
We tried. Last week one of his doctors told us we were the most well-informed and engaged family she’d ever worked with. But in the end, it was up to him. He understood what was happening to him better than any of us. He knew the risks. And like he did all his life, he made the decision to be proactive, to try to fix what was broken with the best tools available. And if those weren’t enough, he invented new tools.
I was with him the morning he went into surgery. I was all set to drive him in to the hospital, but at the last minute, he insisted on doing it himself. He was in control of his own fate right to the end.
He was a brilliant analytical mind, but also a person in touch with his emotions. He might not have wanted to talk about them all the time, but he made it clear he understood. He taught me a lot about that. I’m equipped to deal with this, now, thanks to him.
He was great at speeches, at giving a eulogy. The first one I remember being present for was at my great uncle Kenny Brunet’s funeral, and it changed my life. I’m a writer, he was an engineer, I think he and I both had occasion plenty of times to think, how did the apple fall this far from the tree? But I’ve been looking ahead to this moment ever since: when it would be my turn to tell his story.
He was an amazing dad. He taught us all to think. He showed us the world. He put up with so much—all our craziness and chaos—not just with grace but with laughter. He loved it. He loved us, he loved his grandkids, and he loved Mom most of all.
He was a great grandpa too. The night before his surgery he was playing chess with Diego. You should see the little Rube Goldberg M&M dispenser he made for Luna. He taught us all to fish, to explore nature, how to be curious, to learn, to think through a tough problem. He taught us how to take care of each other. We’re all going to be using those skills the rest of our lives.
My dad loved hockey. I can still see him and his brothers practicing wrist shots in the street outside 158 Bunker Hill Lane. “You don’t stop playing hockey because you get old, you get old because you stop playing hockey.”
Eventually he stopped playing hockey, but he never stopped hunting. He loved hunting. Two months ago, he was sitting out in the woods in Western Mass in full camo with his portable respirator, getting snowed on.
One of the enduring questions of my life has been, what does my dad do out there in the woods for hours on end? How can he stand it? I went with him plenty of times as a kid, but I’m my mother’s son, I can’t sit still that long. I’m 45 now, I’ve had a lot of time to think about it, and I’m pretty sure I can give you the answer. It’s no great mystery, except where it is. What does he do? He messes around on his phone. He texts Matty. Before phones, it was his GPS and walkie talkie. “Where we gonna go for lunch? Meet you by that mossy boulder, south end of the swamp, I’ll send you the coordinates.” He watches a chickadee hop along a branch hunting bugs, or a hawk circling. He listens. Drinks some tea. He falls asleep a little. Literally anything to avoid noticing the deer walking past ten feet below the tree stand he’s sitting in.
But it was never about the deer. Don’t get me wrong, it’s about the deer too, venison is healthy and delicious and keeping the deer population in check is a public health service and all that. But it’s not why he’s out there. He’s out there to spend time with his cousin Matty, his brother David, and with himself. He’s out there just being with himself, remembering who he is. It’s meditation. It’s therapy. When he’s out there, he’s at peace.
I don’t hunt, but I’m in the woods all the time, watching, listening, learning. Being with myself. It’s the thing I’ll be most grateful to him for, the rest of my life.
I have a vivid memory from when I was seven or eight years old, about the same age my son Elijah is now. My whole family was driving somewhere in our maroon Volvo station wagon, and I’m sitting in the “wayback”, which is basically the trunk—it had a fold-out seat with seat belts. My dad has just told us all about the tragic death of his young cousin Robert Praetsch in a motorcycle accident. And sitting back there alone in the trunk, it dawns on me that death is real, we’ll all die one day, everyone in the car with me, my whole family. And suddenly I am sobbing.
My dad pulls the car over. He gets out, with my mom and sisters sitting there waiting. He opens the trunk. “Michael, what is wrong? Is it about Robert? You barely even met him.”
And in between hiccups I explain the whole thing. The end. Emptiness, nothing, forever. Eight years old, I was already a skeptic.
My dad believed in God. The ultimate rationalist, a man of science, reason—but also a man of faith. But he was too good a dad to start proselytizing, reminding me of my CCD education. He’s 38 years old, younger than I am now, already a cancer survivor.
“Well,” he says, “That’s not really how I think of death. I just think of it as—peace.”
That’s where I like to think of him now: out in the woods, in the cold, wrapped up in five layers of gore-tex and wool, sitting on his homemade “hot seat” stuffed with styrofoam peanuts, a gun across his lap he’s never going to use. Just watching. Listening. Taking it all in. At peace.
Thank you.
