Friday, March 25th, 2016.

Tom’s Eulogy

When I was younger — young young, maybe seven or ten, young enough that it’s okay that I don’t remember — Tom and my mom had just recently married. They were on the hunt for a place where Tom could fish on the weekends, and bring the four of us — his kids—to fish on the weekends. Something small, unadorned. Something functional. And so, as all responsible real estate shoppers do, they went to see something lavishly, comically, absurdly out of their price range. You know, “just to look.”

An old, 19th century flour mill, situated on a mile-long private lake. The story goes that this lake fed into a waterfall, which itself fed into a river. Apparently bald eagles nested along its edges, and herons fished it every morning at sunrise. County lore says that the house was so close to the water it was, technically, an illegal structure under the parameters of the 1988 Chesapeake Bay Preservation Act.

This place, this Lake — it was described to me when they got back, as paradise. And well-beyond what Tom had in mind for a weekend fishing hole.

That is to say, well-beyond what he had in mind, until he saw it. When they got there, Tom hopped out of the car, walked up to the water and said, “this is all I’ve ever wanted.” My mom — wryly — introduced Tom and herself to the realtor, who was in earshot, as “Mr. and Mrs. Full-Price Offer, I guess.”

It is, evidently, hard to negotiate after saying something is “all you ever wanted.”

Within a few months, we had moved our things in, celebrated Christmas, and begun restoration of the mill. What had once, oh-so-recently been the quiet sanctuary of an elderly couple, a house whose most distinctive features were its abiding natural silence and immaculate gardens, succumbed — and succumbed quickly — to the noise of life, childhood, and home.

The quiet plops and blubs of fish and lures were drown out by giddy screams and splashes as we, Tom’s kids, and an endless stream of friends launched ourselves and often unwitting others into the water. The view of the lake itself was soon littered with stranded, neon animal floaty-inflatables. The nightly soundscape of soothing waterfall-rush and crickets-chirps was taken over by desperate croaks of dozens of bullfrogs trapped — by young girls braver than me—in buckets next to the deck. Every summer, Scooby and Minnie Mouse fishing rods zipped, knotted and snapped on their way to amassing a cumulative, lifetime total — and I’m serious — of seven fish between the four of us. I always find this particularly warm to think back on, considering fish were the thing that brought us there in the first place.

Tom, for a while, had a pontoon boat launched on the Lake, to fish and relax on. I use the phrase boat loosely here, because it filled that role only a touch better than the pick-up truck we accidentally “launched” into the lake at the same time. In a mournful final salvo to the Lake’s previous life as an old person’s retreat, my final memory of the pontoon boat is of a sputtering, gasping engine dramatically giving up the ghost, while the theme from Titanic — Titanic — played on the radio through muddy, water-logged speakers. We (by which I mean, Tom) rowed the boat back in to the dock over several hours, with one paddle from the front of the boat.

In the past few years, as each of us — the kids — has moved out to school, and to “start our lives,” Tom and Mom moved to the Lake full-time. About a year ago, Tom decided to tear down the last vestige of its previous owners: the “technically illegal” house, and in its stead, build a home he designed himself, from the ground up.

It is beautiful. A fitting complement to its context. But more than that, beyond beauty, Tom’s design took what was once a quiet, geriatric retreat — sit down steam shower and all — and turned it a home. What he built is a landmark and consecration of the Lake’s long-going transformation toward family, noise, love, and company. What I mean to say is that he didn’t design it to make it large — there isn’t the space, you hit water pretty quickly — but somehow it still sleeps eighteen, in beds or pull-outs, with more able to fit without the need for much creativity. Crammed in, comfortably, and all together. From each room, you can look out to see the Lake in all its beauty: the bald eagles and birds fishing, the sun rising over the water, and the stranded, neon animal floaty-inflatables bobbing with the breeze.

Its a space that begs to be filled in, to be loud in, to be loved in. A space that begs to be shared. To those of you here, I know the parallel I am about to draw is obvious. From the moment I met him, as a small child, Tom created around him a space for home. No one can say that it wasn’t messy. Nor should they. Like the Lake after our arrival, the space of home that Tom created was filled by the debris of life — the sounds of sophomoric jokes, staid counsel, and barking dogs. Of lawn mowing, wood spliting, and fire building. Ill-fated tractors, and ill-fated boats, and ill-fated Broncos. The sounds of Patriots wins, and Patriots losses. But, thankfully, mostly Patriots wins.

The space for home that Tom created was a space that was well lived-in. Not ornate, not complex, not pristine. But simple, constant, loving. You feel all of this, and more, when you stand in the house he built, the house that Tom worked on until the very day he went into the hospital.

But the home he built, the home he started building the day I met him, the home that made me his son, the home that brought me Jamie and Allison — that home he worked on until the day that he died. Even when he struggled to speak, he would ask — over and over — if we needed food, or to sleep more, or to be somewhere, as though he was keeping us, as though he wouldn’t mind if we left. He would ask how we were feeling, if Mom had eaten, or she needed a break. His spirits, and I don’t exaggerate it, even in the slightest, were absolutely unflagging. He was patient in his treatments, in their delays, and in their upsets. In the late-night hospital runs, in his struggles to walk or to remember. He was patient, he was kind. He was happy.

Tom asked for exactly one thing in his sickness, and he asked insistently, with conviction and absolute clarity: to renew his wedding vows to my mother, to him the most symbolic thing that made us a family. Which I am so glad we were able to do.

I still can’t tell you if he knew the gravity of what was happening to him, because of how quickly it came on, but I can tell you that through his last breath and for every moment going forward in which the house that he built will stand by the water, he has never and can never stop making a home for all of us.

Tom, I love you, and I miss you. And thanks for everything.

This is the last in a series of essays which I began while my step-father Tom — a good man — was undergoing treatment for particularly aggressive brain cancer. He began experiencing acute symptoms on March 6th, 2016, and passed away nineteen days later.

His family and friends started a college scholarship fund in his memory. If you would like to donate, you can do so at tombroadheadscholarship.org.

Eric.