Eulogy for Son :: Eulogies Eulogy

Eulogy for SonDuring the last months, weeks and days of the brio of Hays Johnson, during that hard time of his illness, he was not dying. He was living. This whitethorn seem to be a matter of semantics or playing with words, barely I learned from him during that period a lesson which I had previously save perceived in a fragmentary fashion. When a newborn utters its prototypal loud wail, a sound which touches the gain vigorts of the bystanders, it is perhaps an expression of sorrowfulness that its stay in this beautiful world is temporary. Perhaps the baby retires what we oftentimes forget, that we are all ultimately terminal. I do not bring forward for oneness moment that in his last days on orb Hays was in a state of denial or rationalization. He knew how sick he was. But he was determined to take the advice of the vocal music Im gonna live, live, live until I die. With one important difference. The implication of the song is that one should take from life whatever one can grab onwards it is too late. Hays wanted to give whatever he could, and it did not matter to him whether his life stretched before him for decades or for hours, he was going to be one and the same, a person who held fast to his integrity, who had a deep come to in everything going on around him, who wanted to be softly involved, who wanted to contri savee in whatever way he could. in that location was to be a meeting at the synagogue a a couple of(prenominal) weeks ago. He said to me I wont be able to make the meeting, but I should like to know your thoughts on it, and I would like to hear what happens. It was not a dying man who could not make that meeting, it was a man who was fully alive, who, if he was impeded by circumstances from doing what he wished, could yet find ways of taking part. Just one week ago I round to him on the phone. He wanted to know what I was doing, and on Monday, as I promised, I put in the mail for him the text of some lectures that he wanted to see. He spoke little of sickness or discomfort, and was as pleasant and cheerful as always. It was fun to talk to him, a man a week absent from a long anticipated death.