Our father’s life was like many great stories, it had: Tragedy, Romance, Comedy, Courage, and in the end Triumph.

 

His Mother died in her late 20’s, his father in his early 30’s and both his brother and sister died before they reached their 40th birthday.

 

As a child, our father developed polio, which cost him the full use of his left leg. He could only use his hip muscle to move this leg, yet he never complained, never quit and always worked hard. In fact, one of his first jobs was digging drains, a physically demanding job. He also worked as a warehouse worker at the Rum Factory at Banks DIH, which was the lowest position you can start at, and worked all the way up to position of Manager.

 

From the day our father laid eyes on our mother, he was in love with her. How many men do you know that have loved only one woman and stayed loyal and faithful to that one woman for over 5 decades? He loved us all so much. He had a way of making each person feel as though they were the most special to him. Even to this day, my siblings and I still fight over which one of us he loved the most. I’d like to think that me delivering this eulogy puts the debate to rest.

 

Our father had many interests. He loved all sports, but horse racing was his favorite. He was also a math genius. He was always faster at crunching numbers in his head than I would be using a calculator. His love of numbers led to a love of the lottery. He would want you to know that he died at 10:30 on 4/12. He’d want me to tell you that he was alive for 25,916 days and somehow a combination of these numbers will win the lottery. But in typical dad fashion, your results will be one number off and that number will probably be someone’s birthday that lived with us or maybe the year their first child was born. Every number had value.

 

It always amazed us that with so many setbacks and challenges, our father had such courage and strength to not just survive, but to succeed. All while doing this with a smile on his face and humor on his mind. He was always playing pranks and telling jokes. He would have a joke for this moment right now, but it probably wouldn’t be appropriate for church.

 

In the end, we were able to show daddy just how much he meant to us. For the last 3 months, one of us was always with him and when he went so peacefully on Easter Sunday, we were all by his side, hugging and kissing him. We have a lot of great memories to lean on and I’d like to show you some of them with this short video that we put together.