The Speech I Gave at my Father's Funeral

[jonchiz67]

My father died the afternoon of Monday, February 14. Natasha and I were in Albuquerque, NM about to look at a house; suddenly we had to turn around and fly to New Jersey for the funeral which would be Thursday. The next several days were absolutely crazy. On Tuesday evening, I managed to take a breath and find an hour to scribble down a few

Comments

[orpheus78]

:(

R.I.P

[orpheus78]

I re-read this again, and I like that you pretty much did what I do when someone dies, which I wrote to you about, and that is, to use one's death to celebrate their life.

Reading this has given me a more in depth story of your father that I have gotten before. Like I said, he seems to have been an interesting, but complicated man, and that's good. The best men are complex.

I can imagine him cooking, playing around with recipes, going through the trial of error of trying to cook different things and finally getting it right.

And just smiling when he realized he got it just right.

Oh, and I didn't know you were engaged, congrats on that! :)

[jonchiz67]

Thanks. Yea, I have many happy memories of him being so pleased when something he cooked came out great.

Thanks for the congrats. It's a bit bittersweet at this moment, but yea, I got engaged last September 25. I thought about posting in LJ but at the time I was pretty much on FaceBook and ignoring LJ. It's a long story; perhaps I'll write about it here later on, after the mourning period is over.

[thespacingguild]

While I'm sorry that it's under such awful circumstances, I'm happy to see you back here. Thank you for sharing this with us.

Even though we both have very different backgrounds and come from very different places in life, I smiled because my own father, who again, is a totally different blue collar-type guy, loves trains too. I guess it's a dad thing.

Another downside to staying away from LJ for so long...I didn't know you were engaged! Seriously, congratulations.

[jonchiz67]

Thanks for the congrats. As I mentioned in the above comment, perhaps I'll write about that later.

Yea, my Dad was really into trains. And and I was a kid, I enjoyed them too. I didn't mention in the speech, but my father thought there was a pretty good chance he was conceived on a train, since he was born exactly nine months after his parents took a long train ride across the US in 1929.

It's nice to be missed and welcomed back to LJ. Perhaps after the mourning period, I'll get back into LJ a bit. We'll see.

[orpheus78]

Dude, how are you, for some weird reason, I am trying to reconnect with peeps from LJ.

Just miss hearing from you. Hope you are okay. :)