Thank you, everyone, for coming today: my father's family, friends, everyone who was touched by the life of this special man. My father, Erva, died in a room filled with people who loved him, a room filled with love. Today, there are even more people here who loved Erva.
In the obituary which was written, revised, and agonized over by many of the people who loved my father--because we wanted to do our best to get it just right--we referred to this gathering here today as a celebration, and so it is. It is a celebration of a very special life. Those of you who have spent any time around me--particularly in the past few days--have heard me state this opinion before (and also know that I have a tendency, in general, to talk too much), but I believe that it bears repeating. Death is a natural part of the life cycle, the cycle of birth, growth, change, development, decline, passing into a new phase of existence, regeneration. No one understood this cycle better than Erva. He was so much in touch with nature's cycle; he lived by it; he reveled--took extreme joy--in it. Let us try--as difficult as it may be--to look at this passing, this "going through a door" in Erva's own words, with some of the wonder, some of the awe with which we look at life's other miracles: birth, a baby's smile, growth, the metamorphoses of caterpillar to butterfly, the changing seasons, the brilliant autumn swan song of the leaves. If we can greet a child coming into the world, whom we have never even met, with joy and love, how much more love should attend the parting of someone whom we have known and loved for years. It is the transient nature and fragility of this life which, in part, make life so very precious. My father was a man filled with joy and love of life. He would want us to celebrate life, celebrate his life.
I tried to think of a poem that expressed, in some measure, my feelings toward my father, since I think that poetry perhaps speaks to certain subjects better than prose. A poem by Dylan Thomas, "Do Not Go Gentle Into that Good Night", came to my mind and I was thinking of reading it. Its a really good poem and, if you haven't read it, you might want to look it up sometime. But then I decided to write something myself and though its not anywhere near as good a poem I'm sure, maybe it says more what I want to say. Hopefully, you can forgive the fact that it is rather personal and self-indulgent:
I have my father's feet:
a startling observation to a
young man.
Erva is an unusual name.
Erva is a name frequently misspelled.
Erva is a family name.
Erva is the name of my great grandfather.
Erva is a farmer.
High praise.
His grip is a hawk, his skin tree bark,
from work.
I do not have my father's hands.
Erva came from a tradition where people help their neighbors and he gladly helped anyone that he could, friend or stranger. It made him very happy to do so. He was an extremely active man and loved to work outside, a part of the nature around him. But my father was at his very best when he was around children: he absolutely loved them and loved being around them. When I remember him, that is how I like to remember his face: transformed by a child, as though his face had absorbed some of the child's excitement, wonder, and energy.