On October 28, 2009 my father passed away. On November 10, we had the final Puja for my father. Here are the notes I used for the eulogy I gave/read.
Most of you are here because you knew and loved my father as a friend.
My relationship with him as a child is obviously different, and as with most children my relationship with my father changed much as I grew older.
As a child, we always loved our Daddy, but it was unfathomable that he would insist that we do all of our homework, or that we follow rules all of the time even when it was terribly inconvenient, or that we couldn’t watch the special TV show we wanted to watch.
Of course as I grew older, I grew to understand, and eventually even grew to appreciate that these were signs of a good father. And that's how I remember him now, especially when I make similar decisions now that I am a father myself and experience many of the same things from his perspective.
And over the years I picked up pieces of information about him that implied he actually had a life before I was around.
He had many friends in grad school. He was actually a child at one point, who enjoyed sports and was a very good field hockey player, and loved to sing and was very good at that as well. And of course he was a very good student, which is what led him to this country. These little glimpses of the man have become a significant part of how I remember him.
And he had some struggles while raising a family.
As a young man he had to deal with the death of his first child as a young boy, which is a pain almost unimaginable to bear.
Writing a PhD dissertation is a struggle on its own, but doing that with young children is hard to imagine. Especially one who thought a hand typed draft of the dissertation would make a fun toy to spread around the living room.
And when we were in elementary school and he needed to find a new job, he limited his job search to this local area so the kids wouldn't have to change schools.
But mostly I remember the man who raised us.
We were never wealthy, but we always had whatever we needed.
When I came home on weekends during college, he was happy to come out and get me.
Some of my fondest memories are trivial things that we did together.
Driving up to the UNC campus and playing tennis, neither of us were any good, but it was playing tennis with my dad. Or tagging along to the computer lab and typing randomly on the punchcards and drawing on printouts.
We had many friends, and many adopted families.
When we moved here, the town was much smaller and the Indian community was much much smaller. So they were friends with probably most of the Indian community back then.
My mom and dad also made friends quickly, and many became part of our extended family. I remember meeting Cumali at the local Roses while shopping with my mom, and she and her family became close friends of our family.
And people from out of town, anyone who had any way to know them, always had a place to go for a little piece of home.Thanksgiving always had somebody new joining us.
And my mom babysat for many kids who became like family, and still keep in touch after many years.
My mom and dad were auntie and uncle to many.
It’s been almost 8 years since his stroke
It’s been a difficult life for him, limiting his mobility and his speech. But fortunately he still had his mind.
Shingles was in some ways worse than the stroke, taking away much of the improvement he had made in his mobility and speech.
It was in many ways a miserable life to lead. And yet it wasn't. Largely because my mom did an unimaginably huge amount of work to care for him, he was still able to have a good life. Certainly not the quality of life we wish he could have had, but still a very good life with many joys. He still enjoyed the company of a loving wife; he still enjoyed visits from friends, he still enjoyed watching his favorite TV shows and sports events. And more than anything he enjoyed having grandchildren around, even if he couldn’t interact with them the way he would have liked, he loved having them around. It is unfortunate that his stroke occurred less than two months after the birth of his first grandchild, but we were blessed to have him live long enough to see and enjoy the company of four more beautiful grandchildren. And he stayed in good spirits; I remember the day he made his last trip to the hospital he was smiling in the hospital room and that made us smile too.
Now he’s off in a new life without many of the pains, and we’re happy that we had as much time with him as we did, but we're very sad that he’s not with us any more. And we'll always remember our beloved Daddy.
