A Eulogy to My Father

Memento Mori

San Bernardino alle Ossa. Milano. Thousands of bones. Lived. Loved. Died. Identities forever unknown.

“I've seen things you people wouldn't believe... Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion... I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain... Time to die.”

Roy the replicant. Blade Runner

“and the dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.”

Ecclesiastes

A Eulogy to My Father

Prologue for Substack

I confess to conflict over whether to publish this eulogy. On one hand, public display of private matters is so self-indulgent and vulgar. On the other hand, publications of obituaries began long before the culture of social media and grief might channel some thoughts of value to others. That or the nonsense borne of grief can bear witness to pathos and grief itself as something of value.     

The Eulogy as Said at the Funeral 28/08/2023

Robert Stanley “Bob” Brennan was born 23rd July 1930 in Newtown Sydney to Elsie and Nelson Brennan. At a time when even the upper middle class didn’t have refrigerators or indoor toilets, Bob was born into genuine poverty of the Great Depression. When war broke in Sept 1939, Bobs father was granted special dispensation not to die abroad and leave 8 children with only a widow to raise them. But a price would have to be paid for the war effort. Consequently, Bob spent the remainder of his formative years in Orange (regional New South Wales) living in an army tent aside a munitions factory where his father worked a 7 day work week engineering and assembling artillery. Men went away and did not return. The radio spoke of the island continent being surrounded by the Japanese Empire. Everything was scarce and all supplies rationed. The toilet was a latrine. Lighting was via kerosene lamp. A layer of kerosene also floated atop the water tank to prevent mosquito growth, giving the water an unpleasant tang. They scraped lard from a pan with bread, sugar and salt to sustain calories. The summers in Orange were blazing hot and the winters freezing below zero. He was raised by his mother with dignity, politeness, and a certain kind of etiquette of bygone days. One time as a child he jumped off a fence and accidentally landed on a broken bottle. It pieced its way from the base through the roof of his foot. His mother insisted he first clean himself up and get properly dressed before visiting the local hospital. This he did.

Though too young to fight, he and the older siblings were not too young to work. In Bobs case it was early exit from school into a mechanics workshop. At an age when millennials nowadays are entering apprenticeships Bob was qualified and expert in repairing and rebuilding the trucks and cars of the day. He was an expert driver too. So expert in fact that he could drive a manual transmission without using the clutch peddle. He would keenly listen to the engines revs and feel the vibration through the gear knob, shifting up and down at precisely the right time without the slightest complaint from the vehicle. He taught both his children to drive. One time I almost killed both of us. I pulled over and jumped out telling my father I wasn’t fit for the roads. He sternly ordered me back behind the wheel and to keep practicing until I drove well just as he taught my sister. In this and much more he believed in both of us.

In his younger days my father raced motorcycles over the Blue Mountains and drove freight and mail over regional NSW. He and his brothers were strong swimmers and could split a shirt sleeve with their biceps. They saved people from drowning in swollen rivers. But not all made it down the mountain. And not all could be saved on the rivers or the roads or the forest. After driving by a crash site Bob encountered a truck driver essentially sliced in half and impaled on what was left of his cab. He gave the man and a hand to hold and his last cigarette. Bob was also the last conversation had with a forestry trucker crushed and dying under dislodged logs. These are just two of many examples.

Later he turned his hand to the job he loved most of all, servicing aircraft engines for de Havilland and other aviation companies. But fate and choice had other plans. In the 60’s he and most of the rest of the family moved to Queensland. Along the way he had picked up his electricians’ credentials and was away on and off building antennae up the central coast. Unlike yours truly, my father could repair, reverse engineer and build anything mechanical or electrical. Self taught in electronics, he was at equally at home with a spanner and a Rolls Royce aircraft engine or with a circuit board, a soldering iron and an oscilloscope. He didn’t need to buy a TV because he could make one for himself. Bob joined with his older brother and father to open the Gold Coasts first television and appliance sales and repair shop before selling out to what later traded under a different name. My father stayed on managing the repairs division. The family and the business were partially instrumental in the Gold Coasts first parade. These are lost histories rewritten by others more vain then he.

Whether its mail and freight to the far reaches of NSW, keeping early aviation aloft or building the communications infrastructure up the QLD coast, my father was one of the few people who would have the right to claim he built this country. This was a time of hard men with soft hearts. It was steak and 3 litres of beer for dinner and nicotine for breakfast, with 12 hours hard labour in between.

It was in QLD that he met Gloria Mayer, the daughter of the chief of the fire brigade. My father chose very well and so did she, not knowing perhaps that 60 anniversaries lay ahead for both. They fell in love and after a very short courtship they married and together formed a family; a daughter, a son, two granddaughters, a grandson and he lived to see himself become a great grandfather of a great grandson also. It would be fair to say that family was my father’s second religion, both the family he formed by marriage and the family of his birth. The two become fused into Family. And family you give everything for, and everything to keep it together. Although several generations removed from his ancestry in Kilkenny, the blood and soil of the Irish soul runs deep. I did not know my father fully until I became a father myself. Young men fantasise and wonder if they have what it takes to become heroes or martyrs. But a father can look at his children and know instantly he would kill and die for them without hesitation, mercy, or self-pity. The love is beyond words.

Whilst he had many friendly acquaintances and was extremely well regarded by the community and those whom he managed, between work and a large extended family there was little room or time for close friends or hobbies. A few months ago, I had a conversation with my father. Had he died 30 years ago or before retirement there would have been dozens at his funeral. But live long enough and few are alive or well enough to attend. That’s the trade-off. Of the eight children of the Orange tent only 4 remain and only Cecilie is well enough to be with us today.  

Loyalty and devotedness were two of his many virtues. Were I to provide examples we’d be here all day. Honesty was another. He turned down better paying offers to enter into a sales for fear of being asked to recommend a product he didn’t believe in. When people wanted to know what car or television not to buy, they asked my father and took his word to be truth. Generosity was another virtue he had to a fault. Many times, he did repair work at great discount, if not gratis. These generosities were for people crying poor whom he later discovered were rich. Yet he’d do it again and again, the pattern repeated not from gullibility but from moral duty. He deliberately preferred risk being exploited himself than to deny the few who just might be in genuine need.

As to the first and true religion, he did not talk about it much. But he was a man of sincere and deep Christian faith. There were times when he assured me God had a plan and had carried him through life, even saving it more than a few times. He was as cynical of false prophets and tin God preachers as he was scathing of politicians, preferring faith be humbly held and all governance be wisely administered. He had a heart for people used and abused by those in power. In my adolescence I complained about his cynicism of politics only later to proudly share it, even surpassing his scorn. To the extent to which I have grown to be my father I am not ashamed. I hope my son grows to be similarly proud of me and the lines that come down through my father to me and to him and through Kathleen down to hers. Our parents build and protect the world for us. It’s our task to take their past and hand it on to our children and grandchildren (or great grandchildren) so that the best of their lived past becomes our future and their present.

Referring to the universe and reality as a whole he would point off into the distance and often state no man can ever know where it begins and ends, or how it begins and ends. But God knows how and where (and when and if) it all begins and ends. In his later years he repeated the so-called Lord’s Prayer many times. A stroke he had more than a decade ago had taken a toll that was finally catching up on him. Bob had been very unwell and in and out of hospital for a well over a year and a half. As death neared, he was in great pain. He had bed sores and a hip fracture that left him unable to walk. His dysphagia had worsened. He was aspirating and choking on literally every swallow. He said his prayers more frequently in readiness of the death to come. He repeated the word “die” to affirm his readiness and a petition to the decider of life over death. In the final hours when I was overseas and could not return fast enough, he was watched over by his loving daughter Kathleen and his loving wife Gloria all the way to the end on the morning of 11th August 2023. He had reached his 93rd birthday a month prior. Beyond their prayers was the divine ear of the same God who I prayed to a world away. When my father passed over the transcendent horizon God was present in that room and their prayers as he was when I prayed days later under the vaulted dome St Sava’s in Belgrade. It was all I could do. 230 feet above me a representation of the Christ our Bob is with now.  

We commend Robert Stanley Brennan’s soul to God today. May the almighty’s correction be merciful, and his eternity be bountiful. There are some here who will live to see the next century. There are some who might not see the next decade. The rest will repose somewhere in between. But none here will be remembered by the living in two centuries. Wind. Weed. Water. Redevelopment. One way or another even this grave and its etchings will be obliterated within a few centuries. Only God and the church triumphant is eternal. So memento mori - remember to die. Or at least remember death. And I hope we all meet God, our Bob and each other on the other side of time and space where all tears are wiped clean, where no one chokes on every sip and every sup, where all is forgiven and enfolded in a love even Bob is (or was) too finite to understand.   

Epilogue for Substack

First, a word of warning from one who has bitterly come to know. Ensure you say your goodbyes and express your warmth towards loved ones while they are with you. Do it today. You cannot predict when the opportunity will pass and the attorney for the prosecution will speak into your mind, condemning you not to have said enough, not to hugged enough, not to have cleared the air. Even if the attorney for the defence can call to memory ample times those kindnesses were said and done, the cross examination will be fierce and the self-judgment at least a little ambiguous. You will not know whether you are guilty or not. Or at least you might not know if you are more guilty (or innocent) than you could have been. Better to overdo than underdo, so that the weight of evidence is in your favour, and you are more out of the jail than in it.  

Secondly, dear reader I mean to jolt you into a little existential crisis when I remark about the effects of time and elements on graves and the futility of material legacy as a pathetic play at immortality. Attend a cemetery in Tasmania, an old state in a young country. Walk back through the generations, from newly placed marble and fresh flowers back down into the mid-late 19^th century where the names can only just be resolved. Walk further down to the precinct of the early 19th century, where all that is left is a grave shaped stone with no markings at all. Da Vinci’s “Last Supper” is already halfway gone. The half that remains is part restoration. Very few people nowadays know the names of their great grandparents. Most educated folk can name a pharaoh or two. Yet these are names without meaningful content or relational continuance. We still have their pyramids. So what. These are glorified arrow heads. Mere man made objects. But who was the hunter behind the arrow head. I did not know him. They say Mt Rushmore - a more contemporary piece made on strong granite – it might survive a few million years. But erosion is not linear, and granite is porous. Once the cracks start letting in more water and more wind, the erosion accelerates. Along comes an ice age and ice expansion and Rushmore will likely just be nondescript forms that might have been faces within tens of thousands of years. Makes no difference though. These faces and the men behind them will be alien to viewers within a few thousand years as Pharoah is to us. Even now, millennials could not name all of these men even in their native United States. Without water and wind and rust, the relics of lunar landings will remain intact on the moon for millions of years. None of us know where they are exactly. None of us know what they are exactly and who build what. Conspiracy theory aside, none of us really know if they are there. If they are, they are evidence of intelligent design, not of any personal life.

Third, we are left with some other place to make a desperate clutching at immortality. Return we do to the hope of the eulogies final paragraph. Still, I have nagging worry. The Sadducees – (who did not believe in a resurrection afterlife) – they challenged Christ, presenting him with a case in which a woman is made a widow again only to remarry again to be made a widow to remarry and re-widow seven times in total. The trap was this, to whom of the seven brothers is she married in the celestial palace of heaven? Christ answer was that none are married or given in marriage in heaven. So far so good. But not quite. Imagine the case of a young couple in love. Just married they remain in the grips of the limerence of the honeymoon phase. Imagine their plane crashes the day after the nuptials. Having defeated the Sadducees, I now ask Christ what will come of their marriage in heaven. If none are married or given in marriage, do they pass from being in lust and in love to become a kind of spiritual brother and sister radically different to all prior held mental states - all prior ehld subjective ontologies? Even if there is an afterlife and some transcendent immortality, who will we be on the other side, to say we have conquered death? Perhaps as our face turns to see the face of God, all desire and worldly identity burns away, the worst of the burning of which is a kind of hell for those with much to burn. What happens at the end of the turning of one face to another? Perhaps there will be continuance of consciousness with only God himself, his memories and emanations surviving the turn. That’s God the Jewish ironist. Everyone can live forever, the catch being only the God within them can live forever. The big question is “if” there is an afterlife. We can only choose to answer this question in the affirmative as an act of faith. Almost as large a question is what we will be on the other side. Who will I be in myself and who will I be to my father. Who is he now to himself and who will he be to me to render coherent the statement “we shall meet again”. I hope God is not too ironic.