We’ve had a lot of time to prepare for this, but I still don’t know what to say. Robin was technically my step-dad, and even though we weren’t related by blood he had an incredible impact on the man I have become, and the men my little boys will grow into. He showed me, daily, how to be a good dad. 

So here I am, the day before this service, trying to put into words what that means. I’m on a flight home from a business trip, which seems fitting since Robin spent so much time commuting around the world. And I spent the last week in London, appropriate for obvious reasons. While we were there, I went for a long run with my wife, just like he and my mom loved to do. 

So I’ll offer this, a couple of Robin’s highlights in fathering.

First, while I was in Cub Scouts he helped me make one epic, or maybe I should say EPRI, Pinewood Derby car. First, with my dad I created the body of the car and hollowed out a cavity to fill with weight to give the car a low center of gravity and maximum momentum. Robin helped me melt some sort of soldering metal into the body of the car, but only then did we apply the magic touch. He brought home some super duper definitely-not-available-at-the-hardware-store metal lubricant from EPRI that we applied to the axles, and man did that car fly. I won my Cub Scout competition and went to whatever the next level was. I won that too, I think, and advanced to yet the next level. I don’t really remember what happened there, but the car definitely retired well decorated.

The other is Willie, the Golden Retriever we adopted when I was 13. I had spent years and years begging for a dog. My mom was having none of it. I doubt Robin particularly wanted a dog, but he recognized this was important enough to me and maybe a formative experience for a boy. He began to subtly take my side and work on wearing my mom down. She couldn’t withstand the two fronted battle and eventually relented. I loved that dog, but in the end I think my mom and Robin probably loved him even more. Robin and I were right!

Of course there are many more stories I could tell about Robin’s generosity, humility, embarrassing dancing and humor, but I’ll stop there. 

I am sad that Robin had so little good time with his grandsons. Both for him, and for Dean and Owen. I hope he knows his love, his influence and legacy will continue through me to them.

Autumn Sonnet
If I can let you go as trees let go
Their leaves, so casually, one by one:
If I can come to know what they do know,
That fall is the release, the consummation,
Then fear of time and the uncertain fruit
Would not distemper the great lucid skies
This strangest autumn, mellow and acute.
If I can take the dark with open eyes
Ane call it seasonal, not harsh or strange
(For love itself may need a time of sleep),
And, treelike, stand unmoved before the change,
Lose what I lose to keep what I can keep,
The strong root still alive under the snow,
Love will endure - if I can let you go.
- May Sarton
 

Death is Nothing At All

Death is nothing at all. 
It does not count. 
I have only slipped away into the next room. 
Nothing has happened. 

Everything remains exactly as it was. 
I am I, and you are you, 
and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged. 
Whatever we were to each other, that we are still. 

Call me by the old familiar name. 
Speak of me in the easy way which you always used. 
Put no difference into your tone. 
Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. 

Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together.
Play, smile, think of me, pray for me. 
Let my name be ever the household word that it always was. 
Let it be spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it. 

Life means all that it ever meant. 
It is the same as it ever was. 
There is absolute and unbroken continuity. 
What is this death but a negligible accident? 

Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? 
I am but waiting for you, for an interval, 
somewhere very near, 
just round the corner. 

All is well. 
Nothing is hurt; nothing is lost. 
One brief moment and all will be as it was before. 

- Henry Scott-Holland