Georgia Wilderness Society
It’s hard to know where to start a eulogy. My dad’s life was just so big, so complicated, it’s hard to talk about it like it can be tucked away into a nice box to pass around and admire.
After all … I’ve known him for nearly fifty years now. For some of that time, admittedly, I was mostly pooping on him rather than chatting … which was, with all due respect … not my father’s favorite part of parenting.
I could talk about his school, or his professional life, other sort of biographical details… He was born in 1948, grew up in Cedartown, Georgia, and spent more than thirty years with the Georgia environmental protection division, moving from Albany, Georgia, where my sister and I grew up, to Atlanta, Georgia – which he liked a good deal more, I think … but to be honest, I don’t think that tells you much that was really important about his life… and I’m sure he would agree.
Dad retired from his job at 55, after more than thirty years there, with a determination to make the most of the opportunity. He always somehow knew that making money, working up the ladder, getting status… everyone saying, “yes, sir,” being the big man… all these traps in our culture, Dad always knew that wasn’t worth nearly anything that mattered at all.
He would always tell me that everyone had a vocation, or a job they were meant for, and that he was meant to be retired. Dad figured he was about as good at being retired as anybody. And as a reward for his good judgment… or really, for his modesty and love, he got twenty years of long days with his wife and kids, and later grandkids… twenty years of trips all over the country, the outdoors, hobbies, interests, all the great gifts of the world set out for someone who can see them.
So, biography. But, I think the real place to start is with my mom, Holly. She was my dad’s beloved, and the center of his world for as long as I knew him. My father, who was so rarely helpless, was always at a complete loss in his devotion to my mother. They were married for fifty years, best friends and devoted lovers.
One of the poems he had marked his book reads, “She was pure and white, resembling the sun as it rises. All other women were merely stars! Love for her has made my heart fly off its permanent branch. And after stopping a while, it is still hovering in the air!”
Dawn and I were his kids, and I guess we’ve known and been the closest to him behind Mom … although in that special way that we’re all better than ourselves for our children. We were blessed so much to get to know him when we were young, and to know him still as we grew into ourselves, adults, and now in middle-age.
There’s a time when you’re a child, when you realize your parents make mistakes… and another time, as a teenager, maybe, where you realize that you might be better than your parents at some things. But there’s another time that comes later, as you grow and live through the years you watched them live before you, that you realize they might be just about as amazing as you thought, back when you first met them. That measuring yourself against them will always be a matter of looking up.
As my knowing of my dad became paired with this different sort of friendship… as I’ve gotten older … it’s never detracted from, it’s only deepened my respect for him as a father, and as my marker for my own wishes and aspirations for manhood and care for my own family. So much of everything that is good, or admirable, or worthy of love in myself as a husband and father comes from his example and inspiration.
At my wedding to my wife Malisa, he gave me the gift of saying I was the best man he knew… and the gift of that, although it wasn’t half true and he surely knew better, has inspired me through so many nights and hard times… trying to live up to what he thought of me.
Dad spent so many hours with his precious daughter Dawn, sitting on the porch, talking, living their lives together for these last twenty years. She built a house next door, and she and her son, Tommy, opened their days and nights to Dad and Mom… filled them up so they were never alone or lonely, even as Dawn and I grew up and into our adulthood.
Eleven years ago, he embraced my wife, Malisa, and brought her in to join his children. He loved and admired her extravagantly, drawing her into the family and letting her know she was so welcomed in so many ways.
And then, since Tommy was born, there have been his grandchildren. Tommy, Annika, and Ari. It was striking, looking through dad’s pictures and working on his computer, how every photo of a trip… canoeing, walking, swimming with Tommy, or of Annika or Ari playing in a sprinkler in Florida, was carefully downloaded and saved. He was so blessed, and knew it, to have Dawn and Tommy just next door, to have the chance to be a grandfather every day and love and inspire a new man growing up, like he inspired me.
My father took true and complete joy in his grandchildren, in their gifts on his mantlepiece, in their letters carefully saved. His grandchildren were a chance to play, and love, and to share the joy he felt in life with others who knew it just as well.
You know, just over Christmas, I started talking to Dad about how I wanted to get us all into model rocketry. That the grandkids would love it, and that I’d always wanted to do it even more, that we should do it with them …. But just talking you know… a lot of my plans are just talking, you probably know that type of thing. But when I looked through Dad’s desk, after his death, I found new books, printouts, all about model rocketry… the working of his heart to start preparing to share with us… but even more, he was preparing to lead us in exploring another wonder of both the world and human achievement.
But, that’s the person he was, the kind of person who takes someone’s desire, expressed, as an opportunity to show caring, and commitment, and passion for togetherness. And… of course he was going to lead us all in this new thing. He
was a polymath, and an autodidact… I use those words to describe him although he never would have for himself, he disliked all pretense or hauteur … he taught himself to be an expert in everything that interested him… and everything interested him. Things that other people cared about… and all the pages he filled with mathematical equations at home, even when the people he loved didn’t know enough to even appreciate the intellectual heights he was scaling.
And of course, his extended family of friends. Thank you all for being here. You’re the family he chose, the people with whom he chose to share his and Mom’s passion for this beautiful world around us. You know, it wasn’t until I grew up that I realized that not everyone had half the tv shows they watched as a child narrated by David Attenborough, or that not everyone learned to backpack before they went off to college. He loved you all, and spent so many joyous times with you, and so many days and nights at home planning and equipping himself for his next adventure … giving full play to his love of invention, his genius and care… have you seen the pulley system he set up in the barn to raise and lower the canoe off and onto his car without his having to lift it?
The folder the photos of the pulley are in is named, “Pulley Triumph”
Like I said, he didn’t like pretense, and he loved humor. He was a truly extraordinary man who valued living, and being, down to earth. He always had a collection of funny t-shirts, often self-deprecating. One of his favorites said: “Grandpa, the man, the myth, the bad influence.” And his humor was shared.
I’m not really a very funny guy… too concerned about getting everything right, not liking to be exposed, but what humor and lightness I have comes from him. I can still hear his wry voice in my head when I make a joke. Every time, even when he wasn’t well, when I was in his presence, whether here in Barnesville or during family trips, there was a sense of freedom and joy … We would all get to talking and I would suddenly feel like I could banter, joking and playing. Dad was funny… and he kind of made you feel funny, too… a kind of lightness and easiness that he brought to my life, and I know too so many of yours.
I think Dad thought of himself as an introvert… he’d tell me how introverts can sometimes love being social, and things like that. Nothing wrong with introverts, and it doesn’t matter much what you call someone, but I don’t think he was quite right. I think he loved people, and being with people, more than anything. When he retired, it was him who brought Mom to Georgia Wilderness Society, it was him who drove the holiday celebrations, family gatherings, parties… bringing together all the people he loved. He was so excited to prepare everything for those times, to get everything ready, to have the chance to take care of everyone.
The people he loved and cared for, their company and companionship empowered him, inspired him. His solitude, which he also loved powerfully, I think, came from a deep and intense empathy, so constant and acute it could feel almost like pain. You know my Dad couldn’t bear to watch even a tv show making a joke out of someone being embarrassed or hurt. He loved to be alone, or alone together without speech, in the wilds, where all of our littleness was set against the grandeur of creation, and awe replaced all the pettiness.
But you know, it was that same empathy, that sometime-pain… which did hurt him, that also gave him such deep well-springs of strength… let him work for others, care for those around him, and to take sure joy in their joys, revel in their victories, and celebrate their lives.
And I think that is also where he got his appreciation for art, all art, in a way that is still beyond me. There wasn’t any form of human expression he didn’t respect, and so many that were passions of his. Music, movies, poetry, dance, and everything else that we do to share ourselves with one another. He was inspired, moved, sometimes frustrated, but always engaged by the whole big, busy, struggling mass of us, of people. I remember he took me to my first circus, my first symphony, my first serious play.
But, finally, and I feel like I’m both dragging on, and desperate to even scratch the surface, Dad was the calm, loving, so, so steadfast center of our family. His love was always put into action, and so careful in his commitments that you knew whatever he said would happen, always caring for everyone, full of peace and assurance...
He was our family’s moral center… for my sister and I, not just as children, but still… now. For him it really was the same thing to say, “what should I do,” and “what is the right thing to do.” It just wasn’t even a question, his honesty and goodness was that bone deep.
He made this often scary, difficult world feel loving and secure, a place where there was endless wonder to find and to explore, together.
I miss you, Dad. I believe in God, and that one day we will all stand before him, not in judgement, but to be welcomed home… and we will all live and love one another again. And “he will wipe every tear from our eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things will have passed away.”
Thank you again for coming today to celebrate my father’s life. I want you all to know that … He knew how much you all loved him, and he was a very fulfilled and happy man.
Eulogy
Thomas B. Payne
January 26, 2022
In Memoriam
