Friday, August 27, 2010

Eulogy For My Father

My father, Mark Morris passed away just over a week ago after a long battle with ALS (Lou Gherig's Disease) My Sister, Kathy, My mother, my wife, Karen, My Uncle Russell, My parents good friend Michael Siblerstien and I all spoke at his funeral.

The following is what I said in honor of my father. I spoke without notes, however, Temple Emanu-El recorded the service so this is a fairly accurate version of what I really said (with a few corrections for the sake of the English language)



Fathers are tough.

Especially for sons.

They are the standards by which we measure our lives and the authority we rebell against.

There are times when we are desperate to get out from under their shadows and times when it seems like we’d do almost anything for a single word of praise.

They are our ogres and our heroes.

We spend most of our lives trying to prove that we are absolutely nothing like them but deep down we know that, that is impossible because they are a part of us.

But lately I’ve learned that there are two fathers. There’s one that you invent in your imagination, bigger than life and imposssibly intimidating. And then there’s the other one who’s just a guy just flesh and blood and hopes and dreams and fears, just like you. He’s just your Dad.



And that’s the guy I’ve spent the last few years trying to understand.

When I think about my Dad, there’s one word that keeps running around in my head, and that’s strength. He was so strong. I mean I guess, for every kid, your Dad’s always strong. He’s like a super-hero. You weight 25 pounds and he’s a grown man and he can pick you up and toss you around and hold you down and wrestle with you and he can beat you at pretty much everything you ever do.

And my Dad certainly did that.

Most of you know we played a lot of games in my house. You’ve already heard a little bit about them. Well, my sister and I, we never won. I mean nothing. It didn’t matter if it was candy land or monopoly. It was throwdown time and my dad played to win.

And I was desperate, and I know Kathy was too. I was desperate to win and we kept playing these games and he kept schooling us. And then, of course, he told us exactly what we had done wrong and we tried to learn the lessons but we never did because we just couldn’t beat him.

Then years later, I’d be out with friends and a game would come out and I’d think, “Okay, hear we go” And they would say:

“Oh, let’s not keep score. Let’s just play for fun.”

And I went, “For fun? What do you mean? How do you know who wins?”

And I wanted to learn this new trick of playing “for fun”. I really wanted to, but I still wanted to win.

And I tried to win at everything with my Dad and I couldn’t, and I couldn’t. Then one day we were arm wrestling maybe I was fourteen or something and I realized my Dad was kind of working. He wasn’t having such an easy time. I mean, he still beat me but there was something going on there. And the next time it was a little harder and the next time it was a little harder and I kept arm wrestling more because I thought I was on to something and around 16 I think, suddenly, we had this epic battle. I mean it was serious and neither of us are going to quit. We’re both sweating and grunting and people are walking by and laughing at us and finally I win. First time in my life I ever beat my Dad at anything. I was so proud and I was going to rub his nose in it a little bit.

Then I looked up and there was this strange look in his eye. He was proud. He was proud of me but there was something else there. He was also...There was something sad there and I realized as I looked at him that something had fundamentally changed for him. It was the first step of me not being his little boy anymore. I never forgot that look.

Of course, he could still beat me at everything else. Dominoes and Trivial Pursuit he could still kill me but something had changed.

And it wasn’t just me, by the way, he beat everyone.

But even though he could do that, there was something else about my Dad that I started to learn. I learned it when I began to look at him, not as that intimidating hero but as just as person. Maybe you don’t know this but my Dad was a little insecure. So even while he was destroying us at Trivial Pursuit, he thought he was the least smart person in our family. That’s amazing to me. How could this person, who was so good at everything he did, be insecure?

Then I started to learn that things hadn’t always been so easy for him. He had to work really hard. He had a hard time in school. He finished Cal in three years because he took such a course load and put so much on himself. It wasn’t easy for him to become an optometrist. It was hard.

It was then I realized that all those games he beat us at. He wasn’t just trying to win. He was trying to teach us a lesson. Because for my Dad you played games the way you lived your life and to give anything less than 100% would be a lie. And he was never going to teach us to lie. He wanted to teach us that in life... things are hard. The game is never easy and if you put everything that you have into it, then nothing else matters.

Of course, it was hard for me to learn these lessons because I was getting bigger and stronger and I got bigger and stronger than him and I was pretty proud of that.

Some of you might have heard about “the Morris Calves”? If you ever saw my dad in shorts (and the odds are if you saw him he was probably in shorts) Then you would have seen that he had these ridiculous calves and I inherited them. And I was kind of proud of them. I’d go to the gym and I’m with guys who worked out every day, like serious weight lifters.

They couldn’t touch the calves. Seriously. They couldn’t keep up with them at all and I was really proud of that. I was really proud of that until one day I realized -- I didn’t do anything to earn these calves. That’s just genetics. That’s nothing. That’s just muscle it’s not strength.



The truth is, I didn’t really know what real strength was until my Dad started teaching me his last lesson two years ago.

We don’t want to remember him the way he was in the last two years. We want to remember him climbing mountains and playing horse-shoes. We want to remember him as pretty much unstoppable. We don’t want to remember him struggling to get a hot dog into his mouth or falling down on the stairs or having to be helped to sit up or finally retreating so much that he couldn’t move at all.

But he believed that the way you live your life is the way you play games. And he put everything he had into this last game.

And it was a losing game.

We all knew it. Even he knew it.

My Dad would say in life you play the hand you’re dealt... and that was the hand he was dealt.

And I think of what I would have done if I had been in that situation. I think, I would’ve yelled and screamed and I would’ve pounded my fists until my fists didn’t work anymore, and I would’ve screamed until my voice didn’t work anymore, I would’ve pounded my head against the wall until I couldn’t move my head anymore and I would’ve yelled at every single person around me that could move, that could do all the things I couldn’t.

But he didn’t do that. He never got angry. I mean imagine... losing every single piece of your life, everything you could do, all your independence and not getting angry. He was always patient, always calm. He was even sensitive to us and what we were going through.

I mean, that’s crazy.

But he believed that you live your life the way you play a game. With everything, with honesty, with character, with dignity. And with all the indignities that happened to him I learned that no one can take away your dignity, unless you give it away.

And he didn’t.

And so in the last two years that big, imaginary, intimidating father, has grown smaller and smaller, retreating, finally, into the shadows of the real man. And I realize that I’m not trying to escape anymore. If I could be like him, I would do anything for that.

And I really hope, that whatever hands the future gives me, that I will be able to play them the way he did, with honor and character and everything I’ve got.

Temple Emanu-El San Francisco, California August 22nd, 2010