My father passed away last month after a long battle with primary progressive aphasia. He will be sorely missed, not only by my family but also by our home community of Rutledge, Tennessee, which he served in many capacities throughout his life, including as the town’s pharmacist and a church leader, nonprofit board member, event organizer, volunteer fire fighter, historical preservation advocate, and all-around mover and shaker.

This post honors Papa with the words I spoke and the poem I read at his memorial service:

Papa taught me many things . . .

He taught me how to bait a hook and how to drive a stick shift.

 He taught me to find small wonders on the forest floor, to identify constellations in the night sky, and to appreciate the majestic beauty of a spring thunderstorm.

 He taught me how to ask probing questions about things that matter.

 He taught me to relish the pleasures of a good book,
and introduced me to the enchanted world of poetry.

One of the first poems Papa taught me to love reflects perhaps the most important lesson I learned from him: how to live with integrity:

Integrity as a community member
Integrity as a family member
Integrity as a professional
Integrity as a human being.  

I’d like to share that poem with you now because I think it describes as accurately as any collection of words could the kind of man my father was.

If—

by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in youExcept the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

May your afterlife be filled with great books and beautiful poems, Papa.