my dads eulogy

It was truly an honor to speak at my dads funeral, as strange as that sounds. At my grandfathers funeral, he had asked me to write something and speak at his. I looked at him like he was crazy, I said “you aren’t going anywhere, what about this, I’ll speak at yours, if you’ll speak at mine” and he said “you know one of us gets the short end of this deal” This would be about a month before his official diagnosis, and I still thought it was the craziest thing, he’s 51 at the time and invincible, right? Because it was so crowded, I’ve had a few people who had to stand in the lobby ask if I had a copy of what was said about him. Sorry it took me so long, but Allen had to figure out how to get back in this blog after 4 years. 

I could tell you about my the amazing dad I had for the past 36 years. I could tell you so many little and big amazing things. And standing before you today, I have a pride that I never knew possible and a thankfulness in my heart for the immense blessing God bestowed on me when he gave me the privilege of being Mikes daughter.

But I don’t need to tell you how incredibly amazing and special he was to me,

I tried to write this hundreds of times and couldn’t make it make sense. After all, it doesn’t make sense that I am standing up here today. I’ll probably reach for my phone until I’m 80 to call him, when I’m happy, when I’m sad, when I have good or bad news, when I don’t know a random light in my car, when I am driving and need to talk. My dad was all those things and more to me.

I had an entirely different route for this.

It wasn’t until Friday night that I first saw the pet scan reports.

Lung masses the size of an apple.

The size of a walnut.

The size of grapes.

Rib cancer

Hip cancer

Liver cancer

Reoccurrence in the first spot

Brain cancer

Every. Single. Lobe.

Front to back. Side to side.

Multiple lesions.

Multiple new growth.

The beginning of bone cancer in his femur

His tibia

His fibia

And I sobbed for most of the night. How did I not know just how much pain he was in?

This pet scan was long before he stopped going to the restaurant each day.

Long before he stopped and checked on his friends when they had hard news.

He spent two days with me helping move my business.

He helped my brother start a new business.

Let’s be clear here, he wasn’t hiding any of this from us. He never asked about size or placement.

Each and every time we would go to the doctor. We would sit in the room and his oncologist would come in and say, “well it’s bigger, there’s a little more…”

And before he could go further dad would always say:

“Well what’s the plan?”

“Or what do we do next?”

If dad had a detailed picture showing showing the size and placement of every single mass and lesion. There is no way in this world he would have changed his course of action.

You know when you’re a kid and your dad is the strongest person in the world? Capable of anything? For us, that wasn’t just a picture of him in our minds, that was his truth.

I know that because on Thursday, mere hours before he would die, I sat across from his oncologist and he still gave us a glimmer of hope. His doctor knew the odds, he knew what the cancer had done to his body better than any of us, yet he would still call a whole team of doctors in that day to give opinions and options, because even his doctor couldn’t count him out hours away from death.

Thursday morning when his body was shutting down, when we had basically been told that there was no more hope, mom, Chase and I went back first to see him in the ICU. Mom asked as she always did, because it was always his choice, Mike you have to tell us what you want to do. If you’re tired, that’s okay. But if you want to keep fighting, we’ll fight with you. Do you want to keep fighting. And he looked at her and “yes” as clear as ever. He recognized us, he told us he loved us.

It’s hard to reconcile that fact that his entire body was ravaged by this disease and he still was willing to fight.

I’ve seen each and every one of your posts and there is usually a “he’d give you the shirt off his back” wrapped up in each one. I wanted to tell you all of these things because the shirt off his back wasn’t good enough. He literally allowed cancer to ravage his body to spend one more day with each of us.

He wasn’t scared to die, he wasn’t doing this for him. He was doing this because he knew how big of a hole he would leave in our hearts.

I wrestled with the fact that we didn’t have that final conversation about death the night he died. Then I pulled out my phone and scrolled through our text messages, and I saw that our daily conversations were immensely more than most people ever get to say in the last week.

There are countless. You don’t know how proud of you I am and me, you don’t know how amazing we know you are and how strong you are.

That’s the life Mike lived. If he had you on his mind, you were getting a phone call or a visit.

From the outside looking in, he was your Mike that you all knew and loved and adored. But for us? He was fighting everyday and my mom stepped into roles that would have never been possible except for her love for him.

In the midst of my stubbornness, my dad loved to tell my husband. “Sorry, she’s Mike Gannon”

And now I get it.

His legacy is much more than just being my dad, raising me, giving me the best sense of humor in the whole world.

His legacy was family, people, love. And as much as I want to just make him ours, he was yours, too. He shared a unique and special relationship with every path he crossed and every friend he had.

And as  I look in the faces of my three babies and my husband, my brother, my mom, my friends. And if you told me, I might be sick, but it would buy me a little more time when the people I love the most.

I’d take the chemo, too. Because maybe his last lesson was his selflessness.

I see just who he was and just who he raised me to be.

I hope that you can take one piece of what Mike gave and be that person for someone, I hope that when you are fighting your hardest battles you think of him and remember this day. He loved you all so much. And Chase, he loved me the most. I’m sorry you couldn’t be the favorite.