Friday, August 26, 2022
My Fathers Eulogy...For those of you who aren't familiar, I'm Stephanie. Michael's daughter. I want to start off by thanking you all for the outpouring of messages, stories, and support from everyone it has been so kind and greatly appreciated. It makes me happy to see how many lives my dad had an effect on. This has been one of the most difficult things I've ever had to do. The past week or so I have just kept thinking - are there any words good enough to describe my father, of all that he has done for us and how much he was loved. How can you distill a lifetime of cherished memories and experiences and truly capture someone in a speech? In times of struggle like this, when I wasn't sure what to do and I needed advice, I would turn to him. He would share some profound wisdom, which honestly would go on a little longer than needed. He had a funny way of turning a 10 minute answer into a 2 hour conversation that at the time, you just wanted to get out of - as I'm sure many of you are familiar with. Now I would give anything to be trapped back in one of those long talks again. But for now, I just have to move forward. I think if you could give me advice now - you would tell me to just speak what is in my heart and on my mind to help bring me peace. There is something I once heard a while back that stuck with me and during these past few week I find it resurfacing over and over in my mind and I'm discovering I understand the true meaning of it now more than ever. It goes like this - When you truly love someone and they love you, you trade souls with them. You may be thinking well Stephanie, that sounds like the overused plot to Freaky Friday. I assure you that isn't the case. What it means is that when you love someone they get a piece of your soul to carry with them and in return you get a piece of theirs to carry with you. But because of that, when your loved one dies, a little piece of you also dies with them. That is why you hurt so deeply and so badly. Then in your struggle with the unfairness of it all - the grief - the anger and the guilt - when all seems dark you remember that little piece of their soul they gave to you to protect - that it still resides in you. If you continue down this path and keep focusing on that pain and letting it consume you, you hurt the last surviving part of them you have that exists in you. In that realization, it occurs to you that person is never truthfully gone. My father, he lives on in the person I have become and in the person my brother has become. The influences he had on us in the things we do with our life after him. With that shared part of his soul we each carry with us, he can continue to see the world and live life through our eyes. So Dad, I promise to you that Jon and I will do our best continuing to show you the world and making you proud. We will take you to New Zealand to walk the Lord of the Rings movie trail like we always talked about. We will travel to England, a place you dreamed to visit as it is home to so many of the TV shows you loved and music you listened to. We will carry on your passion for music, art, books, board games, comics, video games and all things pop culture. You may no longer be here to do these things with us physically, but in your spirit and in our hearts we will forever carry you with us where ever we go. I promise we will keep living the kind of life that you would have loved to be a part of. Jon and I love you so much dad, one day we will meet again, and oh the stories we will share.
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