Dozens of out loud practice sessions and I still was a blubbering mess saying goodbye to my namesake today. Here's my speech. Apparently I enunciated the punch lines enough. A few men who I didn't even know came up to me afterwards at the party and poked me in the ribs to say, "if you had a bra," heh heh.
A lovely ceremony for a lovely man. He'll be missed, but as dad touchingly said, he lived from 1914-2014 and there was an awful lot squeezed into the space signified by that hyphen.
Grandpa stole my dog. And I didn't care. Isn't that amazing? Dad brought Sasha home one day -- replacing another Sasha who got run over -- all dogs get run over eventually in Rodman -- and one day Sasha just stayed down at Grandpa's after a visit. Spent the next 10 years there, getting belly scratches and eating pancakes. I never even thought to resent him for it. That's who my grandfather was. Everyone loved him. Waitresses, students, insureds, car dealers -- he greeted them all with a smile and if you wore a bra, a hug and a kiss.
His relationship with my dad -- through good times and bad -- was the strongest father-son bond I've ever seen. I joke all the time that I'll be too busy or live too far away to care for dad the way he cared for Grandpa these final years, but honestly, I can't think of any better reason for why we live and why we die.
Some of the most cherished photos I own are those of me, Lincoln, Dad and Grandpa -- four generations of Merrill men, lucky to have had one another for as long as we did.
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