Eulogy for Dad

Nov 7, 2009 Eulogy

I’d like to thank you all for coming here today, from near and far, to help us say goodbye to my father, Bruce McConnell.

I am going to speak for awhile, and then invite anyone who wishes to do the same. When I am done, I’ll pass on this stick, which my mom would call a talking stick, but my Dad would call a shillelagh, a primitive Irish club. When the stick comes your way, if you want to say something, please do, and if not…just pass it on.


I learned a lot my father, more than I have given him credit for in the past:

I owe my love of nature and the outdoors to my father. He took me fishing on rowboats in Lake Champlain and off piers in the Gulf of Mexico. He taught me how to steer a canoe and build a fire. I spent a lot of my childhood walking in the woods, gliding through the woods on cross country skis, biking through the woods…all passions of his that have become passions of mine.
My father saw a lot of the world, from the wilderness of Maine to the Florida keys to NYC and San Francisco, Europe and Hawaii. He showed me a lot of the world as a child, and since then, I always kept moving and exploring.
My father became a Mets fan with me…no greater sacrifice, especially for someone raised in Philly. Together, we watched the ball go through Bill Buckner’s legs, and Scott Norwood missing wide right.
My father instilled in me the value of education. The way he and my godfather went on about their Princeton days, there was no question of my going to college. And I am still in college.
He modeled a work ethic, and reliability, going to work every day, trying to help suffering patients, and providing for his family.

I’d also like to count my father’s blessings. At one point or another in his life, he was blessed with
a mother and grandparents who thought he could do no wrong
a loyal dog
close friends
a kindhearted sister
a beautiful wife
two not so bad children
three perfect grandchildren
Fat Cat (and Puzzle)
intelligence
meaningful work in a respected profession
more wealth than he could ever spend
a sense of humor, however odd, or difficult for his children to appreciate

However, despite all these blessings, he spent most of the years that I knew him in a great deal of psychic pain. He did his best to hide this pain from the world, and I am not sure any one of us fully understood what caused that pain, and how overwhelming it could be. Sadly, he never found a healthy way to manage his depression. As a result, over time, he drifted further and further away from all of his passions and blessings. At some point he stopped changing, growing, actively living his life. There was hope that retirement could be a clean slate, a chance to use those countless hours that he used to spend immersed in the anguish of others to begin healing himself…but this did not go as we had hoped, and then he was gone, suddenly, before he could turn the tide.


I don’t mean to speak ill of my father, but to try to shed light on a life that had more than its fair share of darkness, and to learn what I can from that, too.

The deeper things I’m trying to learn from my Dad’s struggles are


-to appreciate the many, many blessings I have
-to try to talk to my family and friends and be open about my feelings, bad or good
-to embrace change
-to recognize what I truly want to do next, then go out and do it

A lot of people who are familiar with my Dad’s problems and my involvement with them, have told me recently, “You can’t fix anybody else. It’s not your fault.” I know that. But the final lesson, that came towards the end, was that, if someone is unable to appreciate, to communicate, to change, to grow…to LIVE…it is not necessarily their fault either. They may be dealing with a something that we can’t see or fully understand, but something very real and crippling nonetheless. They may be far braver than we know.


So Dad, I love you, and it’s not your fault.



After people shared rememberances, I played this song, "Shine" by David Gray, which I first heard about a week after my father died, and expresses the way I feel about the whole passing.

(Gray wrote "Shine" after reading a lot of Yeats, especially "Ephemera")