My dad’s cousin used to be a professional opera singer and they were very close, so I asked her to help me with music for the service. She and her husband brought me a couple of discs; one awesome opera/classical mix tape to play before the service, and then two selections to play during: Pavarotti singing a strikingly different-than-the-norm version of Ave Maria, and Dame Joan Sutherland performing O Divine Redeemer. My dad loved both of them, and saw them both perform, in either Houston or Dallas, I don’t remember. The day before the service, I decided to add one more song, and so this one played after I spoke (which is good, because if it had been before, I wouldn’t have been able to talk):
Can you fix this? It’s a broken heart.
It was fine, but it just fell apart.
It was mine, but now I give it to you,
Cause you can fix it, you know what to do.
Let your love cover me,
Like a pair of angel wings,
You are my family,
You are my family.
We stood outside in the summer rain,
Different people with a common pain.
A simple box in that hard red clay,
Where we left him to always remain.
Let your love cover me,
Like a pair of angel wings,
You are my family,
You are my family.
The child who played with the moon and stars,
Waves a snatch of hay in a common barn,
In the lonely house of Adam’s fall
Lies a child, it’s just a child that’s all, crying
Let your love cover me,
Like a pair of angel wings,
You are my family,
You are my family.
Here’s a link to my dad’s obituary. I wrote it in the car on the way from Houston to Sherman (north of Dallas) and I can’t help but notice a whole bunch of errors, but I think it does get across how much we love him. The version that was on the newspaper website had as many or more comments, too, but I think it’s not up anymore.
I don’t really believe that I’m ever going to feel better and I didn’t know it was possible to cry so much. I haven’t had any (good) dreams about my dad since he died, but last night when I was falling asleep I was remembering how when my brother and I were really little we’d get in the swimming pool with him and he’d bend low in the water and lace his hands together so that one of us could step onto them, facing away from him, and then with all his energy he’d stand up and raise his hands up and we’d fly up over the water and come splashing back down. Then we’d swim back to him, laughing and wiping the water out of our eyes. I can remember exactly what it felt like to hang onto his neck and how the water was a little bit cold and how my feet didn’t reach the bottom of the pool and how happy I was that he was my dad.