The service
for Shauna’s dad was last Monday, and given the short notice I was impressed
with the attendance. The fact that he died on the Eve of Yom Kippur is I
understand considered to be a great honor in the Jewish religion. I found it somewhat
amusing that he passed at 11PM, because Syd always
stayed up to watch the 11 o’clock news on CTV. The service was beautiful and
meaningful. His wife Ethel spoke first, telling the story of their 73 year love
affair, and of their 68 years of marriage. Shauna then got up and spoke. She read
a poem about a nickname that her dad had picked for himself in jest over 50
years ago. When she asked, he told Shauna to call him her “Handsome, rich,
clever daddy with the big brown eyes.” The eulogies were emotional and
heartfelt. Then I got up and said something. To follow is my attempt to honor
this man I grew to love over 20 years …
My Eulogy
for Dr. Sydney Taylor - 9/16/13
I have much
to say and little time to say it, so instead of trying to put my many feelings
about Syd Taylor into words, I’m going to talk about photographs.
The last
two months have been extremely challenging for the Taylor family, as we
struggled to make Dad Taylor as comfortable as possible, knowing that his
demise was imminent. One day last week, after we drove home from a particularly
long day, I opened up my laptop and, as I often do for diversion, I started
looking through old family photographs. I have A LOT of old family photographs
from both sides of my family. Many of the Taylor photos show happier times up
north at the old cottage in Katrine. Fishing was one of the things Syd loved to
do up there. He was an excellent fisherman, probably one of the best on our
lake, and he almost always came home with a string of presentable fish. In one
of my favorite photos of Syd – he was a young man probably in his early thirties – he is standing next to his
father Ike, and Ike is proudly holding a string of big fish, with a huge grin
on his face. Next to him is Sydney, with an embarrassed smile on his face,
holding up one of the puniest fish he would ever dream of keeping. You know Syd
caught those big fish. The loving son, with a great sense of humor.
One picture
speaks a thousand words…
I paged through
the volumes of photo files, through the old holiday pictures of the Taylors, at
the dinner table, at family gatherings, during holidays, at the cottage, at bar
mitzvahs and weddings, etc., and I was for a moment distracted from my current
distress over Syd’s
declining condition. I was instead reminded of a man who had lived a long,
happy, and mostly healthy life, who loved nothing more than to excel at his
chosen profession, to spend time with his family, to travel, to eat good food,
to fish, and to laugh and joke. You could see in his face how proud he was of
his family, how much he adored his children and his wife. That kind of love is
not hard to spot. I particularly love one picture of Dad with Shauna perched on
his lap grinning – she
must have been about two or three -- and she was looking particularly adorable.
In that photo I see the protective, nurturing man I came to know so well. He
loved Dean Jordan, Shauna, and he loved me. The loving, protective father.
One picture
speaks a thousand words.
As I was
paging through the family photos I came across one in particular that made me
chuckle and then I teared up. It was dated September 17th 2010,
almost three years ago to the day, and it is of a day I remember very well. Syd
and Ethel were up visiting us in Katrine. In large part due to their
generosity, Shauna and I built as our primary residence a beautiful log home on
the site of the old cottage, and they were visiting in the Fall. Syd was still
ambulatory but was beginning to have difficulty walking. We knew he missed
fishing, and we were not sure how many more chances he was going to have to
fish, so I suggested we go out. Of course that meant driving fifteen miles away
to find the minnow bait he required. We then rushed home to get it in the lake
before the minnows died. Then, because he wanted to troll, we decided to take
the little dingy. As he was stepping into the boat he slipped and got wet
enough that he needed to change into dry clothes. Finally, after some
difficulty, I got him into the boat, and as I was getting ready to start the
motor, I heard a crash, to see that he had lost his balance and fallen
backwards off the seat. In so doing, he had managed to get a fishing hook
caught in his chin. Now he’s bleeding, and as I got him back on the seat, he looked at me with a
sheepish grin as if to say, maybe this wasn’t such a good idea … wherein I gave him the Jewish pep talk: “look
you SOB, I didn’t just drive
all that way to Magnetawan, then race back here, then wait for you to change
your clothes, then struggle to get you in the boat, just so you could wimp out
on me etc. Here’s some
Kleenex now cowboy up, we’re going out!
Long story
short we did go out, and Shauna photographed us, Syd all bundled up in a winter
coat, both of us grinning as we trolled around the lake. We didn’t catch anything that afternoon, but
we watched a beautiful fall sun set together, and we joked and enjoyed our putt
around the lake. My memory is of a man who despite the ever increasing
limitations of old age, was willing to embrace life, with a smile on his face
and a light- hearted insult for his beloved son-in-law. One picture speaks a
thousand words.
I spent
many, many happy times with Dad Taylor over the twenty years I grew to know
him, and what I will always remember
is how completely he embraced me as one of the family, and treated me like his
own son. And I treated him like a father. Whether it was closing up the
cottage, or attending a Leafs game together, or just sitting around the dinner
table laughing, I felt that profound and indescribable sense of family and I
loved him, and I love Mom Taylor, more than they will ever know … He was a kind, gentle, intelligent,
wonderful man – the best
dentist I have ever had -- and an inspiring role model for his love and
dedication to his adoring family.
I was
blessed to have known this good man, and I expect that he is now reunited with
the departed family members he so cherished, now that he has been released from
this world. Thank you Dad, it was an honor.
That was my
eulogy.
One final
note. There was a baby monitor video camera in the Taylor’s bedroom, pointed at
their ensuite bathroom. The caregivers used the wireless monitor to keep an eye
on Syd when they left the room, and while Syd was in the hospital, and Shauna
had the monitor turned on in our bedroom. Shortly after Syd passed away, the
night she was writing her eulogy, Shauna looked in the monitor to see three,
clear night vision apparitions on the screen. One was Syd, dancing around joyously,
clearly happy and fully ambulatory, no longer a prisoner of his body. To his
right was his son Jordan, grinning and pointing to his dad, as if to say “I
told you there was an afterlife!”, and behind the two of them, with his head
sticking out between them, a hand on both their shoulders, was Syd’s father Ike,
grinning proudly. All of them looked younger, and very happy. I suppose a
skeptic would say this was a wishful hallucination, but Shauna has many times
before astounded me with her prescience. I prefer to believe what she saw was
how it really is, and that the suffering we endure on earth is but a whistle
stop on a very long journey. So far it has been an interesting one.
“Some
people say they saw you, and you were dancing in the clouds/ Who knows where
the illusion ends when the spirit cries out loud”
- excerpt from
“Jordan”
Written by
Jamie Oppenheimer c2013 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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