Eulogy for dad

Good morning. I’m Wren, Hollis’s daughter.

My father said fewer words in a week than most people say before lunch. So I’ve tried to keep this short, out of respect for him. I didn’t manage it, but I tried.

Dad tuned pianos all over Lancaster County for forty-four years. Churches, schools, farmhouses and one bar downtown that I wasn’t supposed to know about. He’d walk in, nod, open the lid, and for two hours the only sound in the house was one note at a time. A, and A, and A, a little higher, and A. People tried to make conversation while he worked. He’d smile and keep going, and eventually they’d give up and bring him coffee.

When I was nine, I rode along with him for a whole summer. I thought it would be boring, and it was, for about a week. Then I started to hear it. Two strings that are almost in tune make a wobble, a kind of wah-wah-wah. As they come together, the wobble slows down, until there’s just one sound. The first time I heard it, Dad put his hand on my shoulder, and he left it there until the note faded out.

He did everything that way. He listened until things came together, and then he moved on to the next string.

We’re Quakers, and some of you have sat in meeting with us. For those who haven’t, we sit in silence for an hour, and anyone who feels moved to speak can stand up. In thirty years, I saw my father stand up twice.

The first time was the week after my mother’s diagnosis. He held on to the bench in front of him and said, “I am grateful for every day of her.” Then he sat down. Nobody in that room had ever heard him say that much about how he felt, and I don’t think anybody breathed for a full minute.

The second time was the week I left for college. He stood up and said, “Wren is going to Oregon. I will miss the noise.” I was the noise.

People will tell you today that Dad was quiet, and he was. He also noticed everything. He knew when the neighbor’s furnace started making a new sound. He knew which grandchild needed a ride and which one needed to be left alone. He knew I was going to marry Callum a full year before I did, and he told my mother, and when I finally told him, he acted surprised.

What he taught me is that listening takes your whole attention and a lot of time, and most of us quit too early.

Dad, next week I’m going to sit in meeting and listen for you. I’ll try to stay quiet the whole hour. I’ll probably fail at that too. I am grateful for every day of you.

Hi, everybody. I’m Adrián, Héctor’s son.

Before I start, my father asked me to tell you something. He made me promise, about four years ago, at Thanksgiving, in front of witnesses. He wanted me to tell you all that he was right about the stuffing. He was wrong about the stuffing. But a promise is a promise, so, Pop, there it is.

My father fixed elevators in Bridgeport for thirty-eight years, and he could not step into one without a joke. “This job has its ups and downs.” “I’m just here to lift people up.” “Don’t push that button, Adrián, unless you want to meet your Titi Carmen on the ninth floor.” Every joke was bad. He told every one like nobody on Earth had heard it before.

The breaker panel in our basement is famous in our family. Pop labeled every switch himself, in marker, on masking tape. “Kitchen.” “Living room.” “Mami’s hair dryer, do not touch, I mean it.” And at the bottom, one that just said “Mystery.” For thirty years nobody knew what the mystery breaker did. We flipped it, and nothing happened. We asked him, and he said, “Some things a man takes to the grave.”

Here’s the part I want you to know. In 2015, when my mother got sick, Pop drove her to chemo every week for nine months. He brought a different joke to every appointment, written on an index card, and he read it out to the nurses on the fourth floor. After a while they started waiting for him. By the end they were bringing jokes for him. Mami told me later that she hated most of those jokes, and she laughed at every single one, because she could see how hard he was trying. She’s fine now. She’s sitting right there, and she still hates the jokes.

That’s what my father taught me. He used the jokes to carry the hard things. When it was bad, he told more of them, and he made sure somebody in the room was laughing.

Last week, while we were getting the house ready, my brother Tomás went down to the basement and flipped the mystery breaker one more time. Nothing. Then my niece started yelling from the backyard. It’s the little light inside the shed. For thirty years, it was the shed light, and he knew the whole time.

Pop, we found it. You’re still wrong about the stuffing. Te quiero, viejo.

Good afternoon. My name is Imani. Terrence Ashby was my daddy. I’m nineteen, and I’m not supposed to be doing this yet. Nobody in here is supposed to be doing this yet. He was forty-six.

Most of you knew him as Mr. Ashby, band director at the high school for nineteen years. A lot of you marched for him. You know the whistle. You know the way he’d say “Again” after a run-through you thought was perfect, and you’d groan, and you’d do it again, and it would be better.

At home, I was Downbeat. He gave me that name the day I was born, because he said I came out right on the one. He taught me to read music before I could read words. When I was five, he stood me on a chair in the band room and let me conduct the whole drumline through a cadence. They followed me. I found out years later that he was standing behind me doing the real conducting. I still think they were following me.

Daddy tapped on everything. The steering wheel, the kitchen counter, the back of my hand in church when the sermon ran long. I’d tap back. We had whole conversations that way, and Mama pretended not to notice.

I keep thinking about what he’s going to miss. My graduation, my wedding if I have one, whatever I turn out to be. I’m angry about that, and I’ve decided I’m allowed to be. Pastor told me this week that God can handle my anger, so I’ve been giving Him a lot of it.

He didn’t miss anything while he was here. He came to every concert, every game and every bad recital. In August he drove me to my first day of college, and he cried more than I did, and he made me promise to join the marching band. I did. I made section leader two weeks ago, and I hadn’t told him yet. I was saving it for Thanksgiving. So I’m telling him now. Daddy, I made section leader.

What he taught me is how to count in. When something is hard and you don’t know how to start, you count it off. One, two, three, four, and then you play. That’s how I got up here today.

The band is going to play for you at the end of this service, Daddy. Your kids. They practiced all week, and I told them you’d say “Again,” and they laughed and did it again. I’ll be in front, on the one.

Good morning. I’m Taras, Bohdan’s son. For the last two years, my father called me Mykola, which is my uncle’s name, and I answered to it.

I want to tell you about my father in two parts, because there were two of him, and I loved them both.

The first one got up at five every morning for fifty years. He stood at the window in the kitchen, crossed himself and said his morning prayers in Ukrainian, and then he went out back to check his bees before work. He came to Parma in 1974 with a suitcase and a cousin’s phone number. He worked thirty-five years at the stamping plant, and he kept bees in the backyard the whole time, eight hives along the fence.

Then he gave the honey away. The mail carrier got honey, and the neighbors on both sides, and every teacher I ever had. My third-grade teacher still has the jar, she told me this week, and it’s still not empty. On Sundays he stood in the back of church and sang the old hymns louder than the choir, and the choir let him.

The second father arrived slowly, about six years ago. First he lost his keys, then the names of the streets, then my name. There were days he was frightened in his own house and didn’t know my mother. Those days were hard, and I won’t pretend they weren’t.

Even on the worst days, he got up at five. He couldn’t tell you what year it was, but he could say every word of his morning prayer without one mistake, the way he had since he was a boy outside Lviv. I’d stand next to him at the kitchen window and follow along. Some mornings that was the only time all day he seemed like himself. Some mornings it was the only time I felt like myself, too.

He still wanted to check the bees, and I walked out with him. He’d lift a lid and tell me, “Mykola, this one needs more room.” I’d say, “Yes, Tato,” and we’d add a box. The hive didn’t need more room. I learned to stop correcting him and carry the box.

What my father taught me, both of him, is that you keep your discipline when everything else goes. He kept the prayers and the early mornings, and he kept giving honey away as long as he could hold a jar. He also taught me, without meaning to, that when someone you love forgets your name, you answer to whatever name they give you.

Tato, the bees made a lot of honey this summer. I gave every jar away, the way you would have. I’ll be up at five tomorrow. Rest well, Tato.

Hello. I’m Rochelle, Cliff’s oldest.

I want to start by saying something to Gage and Lacey, who are sitting in the second row. You two got a version of our father that I didn’t, and I’m glad you did. I mean that. It took me a long time to mean it.

Dad left when I was eleven. After that I got him two weekends a month when it worked out, and a birthday card that usually came about a week late, signed “Love, Dad” in somebody else’s handwriting. I’m telling you that because most of you know it already, and because he’d want me to be straight with you. He never pretended to be something he wasn’t. That was the best thing about him, and the hardest.

On the weekends that did work out, we worked on the car. Dad sold used cars in Pensacola for thirty years, and he could sell you a car you didn’t need and you’d thank him for it. In his own garage, he slowed down. He had a 1968 Mustang that never ran for more than a month at a time, and we spent those Saturdays under the hood. He taught me to set the timing, gap a spark plug and rebuild a carburetor on a towel on the kitchen table, which my stepmother did not appreciate. When I was fifteen, he took me out to an empty fairground lot, tossed me the keys and sat in the passenger seat with a Coke, like he didn’t have a worry in the world. I was terrified, and I loved it.

Those Saturdays are the best memories I have from my childhood. I spent a lot of years angry that there weren’t more of them. I’ve spent the last few trying to be grateful there were any. Today I’m somewhere in the middle.

When Lacey called me in March to tell me he was sick, I thought about not going. I went. He was in the hospital, and he looked small, and he asked if I still had the Mustang. He gave it to me when I turned twenty-five, and it still doesn’t run for more than a month at a time. I said yes. He said, “You still take the corners too fast?” I said yes. He laughed, and then he said he was sorry he wasn’t around more. I said, “I know, Dad.” That was the whole conversation. It wasn’t enough, and it was something, and I’ll take it.

I don’t have a big lesson from my father. What I’ve learned is that a person can let you down and still give you something real, and you’re allowed to keep the real part. I’m keeping the car.

Dad, I’m taking the Mustang out this weekend, if it starts. I’ll take the corners too fast. Gage and Lacey are coming with me.