Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Eulogy for my Dad

The following is the eulogy I wrote for the funeral service of my father, Cliff Radcliff, who passed away on May 25, 2006, after a ten-month battle with brain cancer.

I began practicing archery in grade school, at my dad’s suggestion. For years Dad would drive me to lessons, and then to lunches or dinners for just the two of us. This became our private ritual, one of a few, and on some afternoons he would even try his hand at shooting alongside me. It never surprised me that, even without formal training, Dad always shot well. Because he did everything well. And when I would rush or miss a shot, he’d claim that I had allowed the watchful eyes of others – my classmates, my father – to affect my ability to shoot. I never admitted that he was right, but I will admit it today.

Because today, at just 23 years old, with Dad watching over me yet again, I have to find a place inside of me that will let me say goodbye to him forever. But why? This does not seem fair. My father had only lived 54 years, with an engagement in life and in learning that rivals that of my peers. And with the wisdom and patience and mystery of a man who had lived to see a full and active century.

He had long ago willed himself to stop smoking or drinking. He conditioned his body with Tae Kwon Do and a gym routine that few men his age could have sustained. And Dad’s mind was so vital and so continually thirsty that even the onset of brain cancer did little to sway his focus and eagerness to learn. He read until medications warped his eyesight. He defiantly grew a beard to counter the hair stolen by radiation. And, even just a few days before his passing, he was able to supply Mom with an answer to a crossword puzzle.

I suppose there is a point in a young man’s life at which he begins to see his father not as he’d like him to be, but as he actually is. A time when the son comes to recognize that Dad is fallible, to realize that his father is occasionally if not frequently wrong, and that maybe Dad is a little out of step with the world around him.

I am still waiting, possibly forever, to feel that way about my dad. I am waiting to feel like I have somehow passed him by in my intellect and in my accomplishments. I’m waiting to feel like I don’t need our conversations anymore, to feel that I no longer need to draw upon his pragmatism and his quiet humor and his love. I am waiting to believe that my dad is not the smartest, most passionate, most frustratingly fair and honest and modest man in my life. Because I know that the delusion of believing he is not those things would be so much easier than truly confronting the pain and the loneliness and the anger that I’m feeling today.

As a man, as a student, and as an artist, I have felt a level of companionship and similarity with my dad that I have felt with no one else. And so I know that the coming days will be difficult.

But nothing about Dad’s final battle was just or fair or easy. And yet, when he was diagnosed with brain cancer in July, he did not cry. He only nodded and asked, “What do I need to do?” I was awed but not entirely surprised. Those of you who knew my dad well are familiar with, energized by, the focus and strength he carried in his personal, professional and artistic lives. And by the deep love he quietly, unceremoniously carried for my mother, a woman without whom he told me he’d just be another lonely old bartender in New York.

Over time, the tumors burrowed in my father’s brain would prove the ultimate test of Dad’s quiet will and dignity. Where other men might have mired themselves in self-pity or resignation, Dad, organized as ever, simply went about setting goals. Within days of being handed a death sentence, with his powers of communication being slowly stolen away, my father suddenly began to keep a journal. I never touched the book while he was alive. Privacy is as important to me as it was to Dad, and though I was curious and hopeful about his process for coping with circumstances that would surely buckle so many other men, I understood that the journal was his and his alone.

Today it is mine. Ours. And I think it would be a mistake to prevent Dad from speaking for himself, since even in the worst of times he was such an articulate and deeply philosophical man. A man who would buy copies of many of my course books just so he could follow along with my classes. A man who truly valued his family, his varied and fascinating friends, and his excitement for the arts above all things.

Shortly after being diagnosed with a brain tumor of stage four malignancy, my dad wrote:

“I had a very strange, bizarre time sorting the information out. Was it real? Well, yes, I think it seemed real. It was real enough. Real enough to have shaken my faith, my logic, my grip on reality as I understood it. Could I sort through this new information with clarity? I believed I could, with effort, sort it out. Sort through this with a very clear and unencumbered mind. But in the background, there was a doubt – a very small doubt that I needed to be mindful of. Where did reality start and stop?”

Today I am asking myself the same question. Surrounded by his many friends and by my family, smothered by their generosity and stories and love, I have not yet processed that my dad is truly gone. He was too central to my life, too invested in my future. And just as I was about to set foot on the path that will decide my career and the course of my life, he was taken away in a particularly cruel manner. He will never know my future spouse or children, he will never see my first professional success. Understanding that these things are true, dealing with them, is not a reality for which I am fully prepared.

So I will continue to be angry, yes. But simultaneously, I will continue to be pleased. Pleased that my dad meant so much to so many different types of people, pleased that he found time to rediscover a life in the theatre, pleased that I was with him in the weeks before he passed. And that I was confronted with the comfortable reality that there were no things left unsaid, no apologies to be made or regrets to endure. Dad and I always seemed to really understand each other.

And I am perhaps most pleased that Dad fought so boldly and so tirelessly, and that in doing so he has influenced my perspective of my own disability, my ability to quietly embrace and prepare for any challenges ahead. Dad reserved little time or energy for fear of the unknown or of the seemingly impossible. He simply asked, in so many circumstances, “What do I need to do?” And that – that courage in the face of physical pain and personal doubt – was a fitting, final lesson for which I will forever be grateful.

No comments: