Eulogy - Not a life cut short, but a life that was complete

Tony's funeral was held on 1st June 2010 at Charing Crematorium. The following is a transcript of the eulogy read by his son, Neil, on behalf of the family.

On behalf of Mum, Ian and myself, I would like to say thank you to you all for coming along and sharing today with us. Some of you have made long journeys, others have had to make special arrangements and we are very grateful to you for doing that.

There are some people that would have loved to have been here, but couldn’t be. I am thinking in particular of Dad’s brother Colin, who is in Florida, and life-long friends Roy and Sheila Rumsey, who were defeated by poor health and the journey.

We know that we are in their thoughts and they are in ours.

Thank you too, to all the friends and neighbours that have come to Mum’s side in recent days with offers of help. In times like these, the spirit of community and good neighbourliness is tested to the full and you have all passed with flying colours.

May I also recognise Fred Olson Cruises who provided fabulous support to Mum on board ship in the difficult days after Dad died and invaluable guidance to Ian and me as we came to terms with what had happened and had to make arrangements to bring Dad home while stuck on opposite sides of the world.

While we thank you all from the bottom of our hearts for seeking to comfort us in our sadness today, Mum, Ian and I really want you to join us in our thanks and commemoration of a life that was lived to the full and enjoyed.

We can be sure that Dad did everything that he wanted to do and achieved all that he wanted to achieve.

As a boy and a young man he had enough scrapes and adventures to fill a book, but it was in his adult life that all of us here today knew him.

Outside of his home and his family, he was defined and fulfilled by the voluntary and public work that he did. Dad loved to be involved and at the heart of things, doing what he could to make a difference and change things for the better, whether it was for individuals or for the community as a whole.

Like all of us, he had his frailties and Dad’s weakness was that he was a worrier.

The two people that worried him most were undoubtedly Ian and me – constantly as boys and still occasionally as men.

He worried when I left a perfectly good job to set up the business: he worried when Ian decided to leave the UK and start a new life for his family and himself in Australia.

But he needn’t have worried, because he brought us both up to be strong, independent and capable of making those decisions… and that’s the best job any father can do.

He loved to travel, he loved his clothes, he loved his books and films and, of course he loved his family. We know he loved all of these things and he had them in plenty, so we aren’t here to mourn a life cut short, but to celebrate a life that was complete.

In the search for a reading, I looked at the usual suspects like Shakespeare, Tennyson and Keats, but they’re a miserable bunch when it comes to dying, so instead, I’ve chosen something by comedienne, Joyce Grenfell.

As Dad goes to join Joyce, and all the other comedians that made him roar with laughter in front of the television when I was a boy, I think he would have wanted to say something like this:

"If I should go before the rest of you,
Break not a flower, nor inscribe a stone,
Nor, when I’m gone, speak in a Sunday voice,
But be the usual selves that I have known.
Weep if you must:
Parting is hell,
But life was good,
So...sing as well!”