Eulogy to my grandfather, Mr. C, given on the morning of  9/23/17

Who was Charles? The question of how to define a person after they cease to be a living, acting, behaving and thinking entity.
Being his grandson, I, of course, have not known him for as long a duration as others in attendance today, especially not my dear grandmother, his wife, and the love of his life.

I cannot make statements about a man I did not know, but I can speak about the outward showings of the way he expressed himself and loved me during the time I was able to know him, and the importance he has left in my life.

As Jamie has rightfully pointed out, he was a “complicated” man. Of course, complication is a synonym for possessing a multi-faceted existence, you see, even if human emotions or behavior is extreme in one way, it is also extreme in the inverse. Someone is only able to love who hates, someone is only angry or depressed because they have the capacity for the depth that such states emerge from. 

There were two Charlies, to be sure, perhaps many more.

However, I believe, if he had a choice, he would like to be remembered as a man of letters first, and at a close second, a devoted husband, followed by being an entertaining and disciplinary father. 
Now, we know peoples own perceptions and desires for themselves often differ wildly from how that person is received by others, especially, and tragically, by those closest to him. Because it is wearing to be close to a man who is divided. The truth is, selfish men do not know what they want, and it is why they can never truly be womanizers, only fantasy weavers.

Writers often have this nature about them, more comfortable in the realm of the text than the realm of the flesh. They are usually considered both lackluster husbands and lousy lovers, even if they often attract a woman at first, with the capabilities of their mind.

In a way, this leaves the mourners left in a state of confusion, like the tale of the Ship of Theseus, whose every component was restored multiple times, to the point where it became a puzzler - is the ship before my eyes still Theseus? It provokes questions of ontology, definition, and essence-the Platonic question - is man an island? Man qua man, perhaps, but an individual man... in all his singularity and eccentricities, is a perpetually transformative creature. To this reality, we must oblige ourselves every day we are blessed with a new one.

Jesus teaches us... what I believe to be Christianities' most radical and beautiful facet-the dictum to love thy enemies, and always, always forgive. 

The point is not to dismiss or discount what the sinner committed; that is not why we go to confession. We go with the opportunity to be re-birthed, to be given the grace of baptism once again. That Is to say, you always will have another chance because you are not a static creature, in fact, the only thing that is so unchanging, so stable, is the lord's love itself. 

Let us pray for a brief moment, that Mr. C receives the stability he unconsciously yearned for, likely robbed from him as a child, but for which he could not ever actualize as he claimed to desire... May he receive this, in heaven.

In closing, I believe it is our duty as children of Christ, not to mourn a relative as we knew them, but as they would like to have been known. That is how to respect otherness.

Charles would often define me as a "dreamer," but as is revealed many a book of his; he was as well a dreamer. Some might say a man who followed his own dreamy desires over the needs of others. But this is to make a grave representational error, albeit one that is essentially human amist the mechanisms of love.

Alas! In the end, in the final hours, we are only left with a memory that was not ours.

To love is to learn how to let go. 

The private world of the letter can never be felt as viscerally as that of the ordinary world of the flesh, especially to woman. But for some, it at-least allows for an outlet for love that might not be so readily spoken without the superficiality of anger obfuscating its core values of authentic, though admittedly misplaced love.

The word is always meant to be shared, but not necessarily to be read, to be interpreted, by anyone but the creator. 

May Mr. C, my beloved grandfather, my first hero, rest in peace. 

Amen.