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bomberqueen17
https://bomberqueen17.tumblr.com/post/639656989532766208/lies-on-the-floor
:
I tried to write my dad a kind of eulogy, kind of bouncing off the things
various of my family members said in the Zoom funeral, and looked up a
bunch of quotes like it was an essay, and outlined a few ideas of what kind
of thing I wanted to say, and–
Well, really what I have here is a thing I want to discuss with him and get
his input on, is what it boils down to.
Ah, what I wanted to talk about was– well, all the condolence cards from
people who knew him through my mother were “he was such a quiet man”,
which, HA, and all the ones who knew him for his own achievements went on
about his many areas of expertise and his startling array of knowledge on
obscure topics, and the ones who knew him really well talked about how
fond he was of arguing and how much he unexpectedly knew about so many
things– and I had realized that, you know, one throughline of my whole life
and his was how many books he read, all the time, he was always reading
books, and how I feel like his love of reading and imagination had really
made him a very free person, he wasn’t bounded by the same constraints as
many people; he came up with new solutions to problems all the time not
just because he’d studied so many ways of doing things, but because he
always, always kept his imagination exercised.
But then we get to the part that fucking sucks, because the thing is. My
dad was quiet around a lot of people; it wasn’t worth his while to get
animated in his small talk, so mostly he kept his thoughts inward unless it
was called for. And so even for people who knew him well, it was very easy
to assume you knew what he was thinking! And sure, he was predictable in
some things– he had basically prepared rants on certain topics that never
varied– but the thing was that you never quite knew what he was going to
come out with. For years, Mom had a smartphone and he didn’t, so the family
groupchats were filtered through her– “Dad says try [x]”, “Dad thinks
that’s funny–” and only a couple of years ago did some situation arise
where he said, okay, fine, I should just get my own phone.
For him this was a revelation because then he could get ebooks on it, and
never be without the entire library catalogue. But for the family, this was
a revelation, because now he could respond directly to the group texts,
without the filter of Mom– who of course had his best interests in mind and
knew and loved him better than anyone and wouldn’t misrepresent him, but
also could not help but flatten him a little because secondhand is never as
sharp as straight from the source.
And that’s what it boils down to. Any essay I come up with, any conclusion
I draw, is going to be my conclusion. It won’t be what he would have
said. It won’t be how he would have described himself.
It’s only me, talking about somebody I’m never going to get to talk with
again.
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