Eulogizing Your Father

Roy: a Hunk of A Son

Roy's love for his father
Don't you just love the blogs. In the past, people were limited to the tombstone as the medium to express their feelings for their dear departed. Now, you can pour your heart out by posting a eulogy in your website. I am not sure if there is a DSL connection in the afterlife, although people write eulogies not for the dead but for the living. (To communicate with the dead, please google Madam Auring)


I stole two paragraphs from Roy's blog and blogpesticided it.

"My Tatay wasn’t born into a life of comfort and access to even the most basic of things. From a young age, he had learned to work to provide for himself and his family. He finished school, graduated from college, became a Certified Public Accountant, earned his Masters in Business, and finally, became a lawyer, all by his own means. I often think that if only I’d possess half of his intellect and drive, I would, perhaps, be far more better than what I am now.

But in spite of these things he’s single-handedly achieved, he remained simple in his ways. He’d be more comfortable walking instead of driving, he’d be better off with his flip flops than wearing dress shoes and would rather stay home and fix things that don’t really need repairing. We somehow knew that what made him happier was seeing us experience all the things he never had the luxury of having. We weren’t rich, but my parents were able to provide us with all that we ever needed."

On the Grammar:

A eulogy is a speech or writing in praise of a person or thing. The word is derived from the Greek word εὐλογία (eulogia), meaning praise i.e. good word. But because the subject of a eulogy is a departed person, the tense is always simple past - not past progressive, unless one feels confident that the dead man will rise on the third day after his burial.

1. This is a common error when writing an adjectival phrase. Here, our blogger Roy describes the early life of his father as "wasn’t born into a life of comfort and access to even the most basic of things." The result becomes awkward because the last series of words are supposed to define life: a life of comfort (understandable) and a life of access to even the most basic of things (awkward). But if you drop the last phrase, the sentence becomes simple, clear and elegant. "My father was not born into a life of comfort."

2. Change from to at, as in, " At a young age", when portraying an incident that happened at a particular point in time. Use FROM when describing a range of time, as in, "From the age of ten up to his twenties, etc."

3. Finished school and graduated from college is a redundant phrase, as both refer to the same achievement. You can't say, "I did not finish school but I graduated from college." Unless, you refer to the Recto produced diploma.

4. State a wish in its present tense when describing a quality, in past tense when describing an act which you failed to do. "If only I possess half of his intellect and drive (qualities)", "If only I studied harder in school (act)."

5. When describing a dead person, use the past tense. It is also more elegant to use active voice: He preferred walking than driving, flip flops than dress shoes. He loved to stay home and fix things that didn’t really need repairing."

There is a certain sense of pride and guilt when sons talk about dead fathers. The pride always comes because of what the father achieved. Yet, there is also guilt for not measuring up to the standards set the old man.

Roy, you are your father's child. There is no need to measure up to what he had achieved because that was his own life, his own mission and his own source of meaning. Find your own.