Goodbye True North's Richard M.
My name is Antonia. I’d like to welcome you today to Saint Anne Church and more explicitly to the Catholic Church. Catholic funerals may be a bit different than other remembrances that you have attended. We believe in the resurrection of the dead, and therefore, our funerals are celebrations. I was raised by a Jesuit-educated father—which is basically an overeducated Catholic on steroids. My sister and I were taught never to wear black to a funeral—because it emphasized physical death and not spiritual resurrection. Therefore, I feel I must apologize for the color of the outfits my daughter and I have chosen to wear today. I’m afraid we let our fabulous fashion sense override our need to symbolize Richard’s resurrection. I’m sure he’d understand.
On Christmas Day 2000, nearly 10-years ago, I was lucky enough to meet the person you have come here today to celebrate: the loving, optimistic, literate, happy man named Richard. When I met Richard, I met a man shattered and broken by tragedy. His wife of nearly 40-years died a painful and horrible death and he was estranged from his only grandchild, Jainey. He was berefit.
Over the course of a few months, I watched him struggle sometimes successfully, sometimes not, to pull himself together and invent a new life for himself.
At the time we met, I was also shattered. After founding my own dot.com company and subsequently working in marketing at a number of related start-up firms, I developed health problems that prevented me from working the 14-hour days required by executives pulling in the salaries I commanded. Moreover, I was terribly unhappy. Seven years earlier I had been chosen to be the mother of the most brilliant, loving, and beautiful child: Alexandra. The girl most of you call Ali. I found that I was constitutionally unable to leave this remarkable child to be raised by people I employed. I had a dilemma: I could use my connections to secure another six figure job—or I could follow my heart and become a full-time mother.
I once read that former first Lady Jacqueline Kennedy said that if you didn’t raise your children right, that nothing else you might accomplish in life mattered. I followed her advice and I settled down to raise my talented, creative, wildly funny child full-time--by myself.
It was only while writing this eulogy that I realized that I met Richard three weeks after reaching that decision. Obviously nothing happens by accident and God clearly had other plans than for me to continue being a single mother.
Richard and I were increasingly thrown together in the early months of 2001. As he began to heal, I watched him blossom like his beloved roses in his garden at his California home. It soon became apparent to me that it was providential that Richard was born in Spring. He grew up literally on a cliff overlooking the beautiful Pacific Ocean. His eyes were as blue as the water on Sunset Beach and today his earthly remains swim in the currents of the water he spent his childhood in.
Throughout Richard’s life he carried a youthful, insatiable curiosity, a love of science, reading and music. After prayer each night he put himself to sleep by dreaming of visiting other constellations. He had the most imaginative, positive, loving spirit of anyone I have ever known. Richard could enter into any circumstance and enjoy himself. I have never met another person so supportive and so constitutionally sunny. Richard was a man who truly never met a stranger.
To this day, I’m still not quite certain who fell in love with Richard first: Ali or myself. From the time of their first meeting, Ali and Richard shared a playful, increasingly loving relationship. He loved getting a second chance to become a parent; and she relished the unselfish attention and care that Richard showered on her. By the time Ali was in third grade, Richard got into the habit of driving her to school. He adored the time they spent together each morning and would come home happy and invigorated. I once asked Ali what they did on their drives to school and was startled to hear that they would sing and meow like cats to each other. At one point, this drive to school was 30-minutes long. The meows rang through the sun-kissed strawberry fields of Ventura County as Richard and Ali made their way to school each day. This ritual continued until we moved to Virginia and it made Richard a very happy man.
It was Richard who taught Ali to cook when she was just seven years old. As an over-protective single mother of an only child, I wasn’t ready for Ali to use cutlery or handle hot surfaces. But Richard overrode my fears and helped create a young woman with a passion for cooking and enjoying great food. I am certain that this interest in the culinary arts that Richard fueled will continue to be one of Ali’s greatest joys as she travels through life and forms a family of her own.
Richard just didn’t create a great cook, he also created a carpenter. When she was eight, Richard got Ali her own tool belt and they spent hours in his garage building computers, boxes, fixing every broken electronic device in the house. To my chagrin, my daughter soon knew her away around foreign things in the garage like hammers, drills and even finally the table saw. A skill she recently demonstrated to her startled boyfriend.
I am very proud to be the mother of such a handy young woman, but Richard was even prouder. He had learned from the mistakes of the past and was becoming something really surprising: he was becoming a really good Daddy to the young woman he privately called our daughter.
When most of us our young, we dream of growing up and changing the world. What most of you do not know is that Richard actually accomplished that goal. He was a brilliant and talented engineer and he was instrumental in the programming that made digital music possible.
He was a true pioneer and everyone in this room enjoys the clarity and beauty of recorded digital music because Richard was an integral part of the team that figured out how to make this possible.
Like all of us, Richard struggled with problems and challenges. The biggest challenge was an increasingly troubling case of manic depression, which was diagnosed during the last decade of his life. Richard was an unusual and courageous victim of the bipolar condition he struggled with throughout our relationship. Unlike most manic depressives, Richard never stopped taking his drugs. He didn’t want to experience the highs the mania induced and he hated the rages that would sometimes erupt from his psyche. He fought a good fight and I was proud to love a man who faced the challenges in his life with such determination and optimism.
I would like to end by thanking God for taking Richard home so quickly. Eighteen days before his death, we were celebrating Ali’s birthday at Dollywood. Richard had a wonderful time and bought us beautiful rings engraved with our names. Once again—we recommitted our lives to each other. We did not know at the time that a veil had dropped over our family.
Melanoma is a desperately terrible disease that invades the body like the Kudzu that has overrun the South. The average patient lives 120-days from the moment of diagnosis. Richard lived 118-days. All but a few were happy days spent celebrating the little family we had created together. Except for the last few days of his life—he was providentially spared most of the pain experienced by so many others.
I thank God for taking care of my Richard—and especially for the loving¸ spiritual and exceptionally thoughtful staff of the Select Specialty Hospital on the fifth floor of Bristol Regional. The nurses there literally saved my life while they mercifully helped Richard come to terms with the end of his time on earth.
I must also thank God for our tender mercies: Ali’s wonderful friends and their parents reaching out to us through our pain.
To the B. family I can only say, that I fear I can never repay my debt to you. Randall and Jean, thank you for taking Richard, a former Navy man who proudly served as a radarman on a wooden minesweeper rather fantastically named “The Impenetrable” on his last boat ride. Thank you for the dinners you made for us during Richard’s last week of life.
To Jean, thank you for picking up the phone in the early morning hours of September 25, and for having the grace and thoughtfulness not to pick up Ali and bring her to the hospital as I asked, but rather to come to the hospital to get me. Watching you pack up my room just inches from Richard’s body taught me a new meaning of friendship. Thank you also for allowing Ali and Patrick to remember Richard as he was in life—and not in death.
We are also indebted to Patrick, Mackenze, Heather, and Jared for the incredible amount of work that they did at our home the weekend of Richard’s death. I’d like to thank Jackson for the beautiful instrumental guitar performance he will give in a few moments, and for inviting a middle-aged woman to your 17 birthday party.
Thanks so much to Randall and Wilma for the copious amount of Pizza you sent to us the day Richard died. Jean for the groceries so generous they stuffed her Yukon to the gills. We still can barely open our freezer.
To Kimmy, for climbing into bed with Ali and myself just hours after Richard’s death and watching a movie with us while we tried and failed to contain our broken hearts. Your presence meant more to us than you will ever know. To the Dawseys, thank you for your prayerful and much appreciated visits to Richard during the last week of his life and for the fabulous meal you sent our way.
Richard would want me to pledge today to keep our house a home of love and laughter. Despite leaving behind a hole in my heart that will never heal, I promise to move forward positively in my life and to continue guiding Ali in the optimistic path you taught us both.
When Richard died I asked Ali how she would describe him. Her answer summarized the whole of his life. “He was beautiful,” she said.
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