Saying Goodbye to my Grandfather
My Grandfather passed last August and I wrote about it then, but during the funeral I had the opportunity to speak a small amount about him which meant the world to me. He was by far one of the greatest role models I’ve had in life. Although our lives were very different, who he was as a person gave me a template for how to show up in life, and I couldn’t be more grateful for the opportunity to get to know him this way.
I had the eulogy I gave for him written down and stored away. It’s definitely emotionally loaded, but has a good message about integrity and I thought it was worth sharing here eventually.
Here it is for anyone to check out, enjoy!
Hey everyone. Over the past few days I’ve heard many great things about my grandfather and I’m grateful for all of the folks and family that came to celebrate his life. In many cases you knew him longer than I did. Many have shared fond memories, kind actions, and celebration of who he was. I’m thankful for my mom, aunts and uncle for giving me an opportunity to talk about him and I wanted to use the time I have to talk about what I’m most grateful for my grandfather for in life. For me, there were countless fishing trips, pontoon trips on the river, and soccer tournaments as a kid, but more than that my Grandfather was one of the strongest role models in my life. Before I talk about that, first, I wanted to by reading the prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi because to me it’s reminds me of many moments with my grandfather:
Prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace
That where there is hatred, I may bring love.
That where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness.
That where there is discord, I may bring harmony.
That where there is error, I may bring truth.
That where there is doubt, I may bring faith.
That where there is despair, I may bring hope.
That where there are shadows, I may bring light.
That where there is sadness, I may bring joy.
Lord, grant that I may seek rather to comfort, than to be comforted.
To understand, than to be understood.
To love, than to be loved.
For it is by self-forgetting that one finds.
It is by forgiving that one is forgiven.
It is by dying that one awakens to Eternal Life.
When I was reflecting on what I was most grateful for from my grandfather, the thing that kept coming to mind wasn’t a specific moment or memory. It’s a lesson, but it wasn’t one he explicitly taught me. He never sat me down and gave me some big lecture as a kid saying “this is the way to do it!”. Instead I learned it by watching him, listening carefully, and then thinking to myself “that’s the kind of person I want to be too.”
It’s a lesson about integrity and character.
The definition of character is how people perceive your moral actions. It’s a sort of social currency based on reputation. When people say “he has good character” what they mean is that that person acts in a way that is morally good when other people are paying attention. It’s important, but not the core, to living a successful and happy life. You can have good external character by taking actions that people admire and respect but still fall short in other moments. There are many people out there in the world who want to be perceived as having good character just because they want to be liked by others.
Integrity, on the other hand, is what you do when other people aren’t watching. It can lead to good character, but whereas character is an external perception by other people, integrity is internal and core to who you are.
Integrity is service that puts others before yourself, not because it makes others like you, but purely because it’s the right thing to do. Integrity is having the humility to say “I don’t know, but let’s figure it out” and the courage to face your mistakes and ask “how do I make this right?” Integrity is leading with understanding instead of self-centerness in situations where it isn’t expected of you. It’s the strength to face your flaws and course correct for the benefit of other people in your life. Integrity is about patience and faith that things will work out, even when that is far from certain. It’s a way of living without fear but with a sense of bravery about the unknown and stewardship for the future. Having strong integrity means spending your life creating much more value than you retain, taking less credit, and defaulting to faith when things are uncertain or hard. You can’t force someone to have good integrity or teach it to kids. It’s something they choose on their own after seeing examples of it.
My grandfather had some of the strongest integrity of anyone I know and it reflected in the way people knew his character. What made my grandfather so special is that he had such strong integrity that he was able to show up and face his greatest fears instead of backing away.
The example of this that stood out the most to me was from around the time my grandmother passed, when I came back to see her one last time about a month before she died.
Some of you might not know this but my grandmother passed away last year from late-stage Alzheimer’s. My grandparents knew each other since they were young children, and after 70+ years together my grandmother started to get sick and my grandfather became her caregiver for basic things. It was a big flip in roles. He was an old-school family practice doctor and did everything he could to help her, knew exactly what was happening, all the way to the end. In those moments he made a conscious decision to be there for the person he loved most in this world.
I’m sure he had a lot of fear. Anyone would.
Those last few weeks, after years of disease, she was scared and confused. People with late-stage Alzheimer’s start to lose a lot of sense of themselves and it’s quite scary. Instead of giving into his fear too, my grandfather did everything in his power to do right by her. He held her hand. He would help feed her her favorite foods and get her up and around family at dinner. At night he would pull their hospital beds together so she would feel safe. He worked with the caregivers to make sure she wasn’t in pain. To the very end, she was his partner and he loved her more than anything. When she finally passed, he was there all the way through.
People appreciated his actions, but no one was there to give him some big award. He just did it because it was the right thing to do to honor the person he had spent his life with.
Seeing my grandfather do that showed me that I could have the courage to face my greatest fears too, and helped hammer that lesson home in a way that nothing else could.
No one is born this way. We’re all born with our own imperfections and flaws and will keep making mistakes, big and small, as long as we are alive. It’s part of being human. At some point in our lives, everyone is faced with a choice to put others before ourselves, and not everyone chooses the path of service that my grandfather took. It came through in many ways that people are talking about him today. Throughout his life, my grandfather made a conscious decision to stand up for what was right, take ownership, put in the work even when it isn’t easy, extend a helping hand to those who need it the most, and in the hardest possible moments over many, many years choose that love and service for others over his own desire for his own comfort. That’s the integrity he had which was so core to who he was.
Grandpa, as we say goodbye one last time I wanted to say thank you for all of the good times and being a role model that I could look up too. I wouldn’t have learned that lesson without you. It leaves me with pride for where I came from and a sense of responsibility to make that same choice to deal more kindly with one another and live that good life you showed me.