To The Father

Nine years ago to the day my father left me with a smile, he asked if I needed a ride to work, I said no. At 9pm that day I learned that his mangled body lay in a cold drawer at Tawam Hospital, the victim of a mysterious road crash, the cause of which I still do not fully understand.

His passing filled every part of our lives my mother and I with boundless stillness and an unquenchable yearning to hear his voice or see his smile. I struggle daily to remember his face, its weird what the mind does to what it unilaterally deems ‘old useless data’ that takes up too much precious grey-cell space. I have had a hard time talking about his passing, even writing about it, it’s not an easy subject to bring up without getting emotional.

The span of years has done little to dull the pain of a sudden unexpected loss. His counsel is often needed yet all I have are dusty memory reels replayed in my mind during moments of still contemplation.

I have sought to find the words to describe or eulogize his life and I have failed to find the right ones, except to say what he would oft repeat: that this life is unrelenting struggle. So let me then borrow a few choice words from a 300-year-old Englishman that can put things in to perspective. Below, my favorite passages from Thomas Grey’s “Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard”:


Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;
Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile
The short and simple annals of the Poor.

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Awaits alike th' inevitable hour:-
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.


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Can storied urn or animated bust
Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?
Can Honour's voice provoke the silent dust,
Or Flattery soothe the dull cold ear of Death


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Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.


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Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country's blood.


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Their lot forbad: nor circumscribed alone
Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined;
Forbad to wade through slaughter to a throne,
And shut the gates of mercy on mankind,


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Along the cool sequester'd vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenour of their way.


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Their name, their years, spelt by th' unletter'd Muse,
The place of fame and elegy supply:
And many a holy text around she strews,
That teach the rustic moralist to die.


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The Epitaph


Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth
A youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown.
Fair Science frowned not on his humble birth,
And Melacholy marked him for her own.

Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,
Heaven did a recompense as largely send:
He gave to Misery all he had, a tear,
He gained from Heaven ('twas all he wish'd) a friend.

No farther seek his merits to disclose,
Or draw his frailties from their dread abode
(There they alike in trembling hope repose),
The bosom of his Father and his God.

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