Eulogy

Timothy Richard Mullaney

1973  - 2013

Written by Nancy Muller

Read by Booke Hauser Mac Donald

Memorial Service  -  October 12, 2013

 

Tim Mullaney was a close family member in our rather large family for all of his brief life of forty years.  For most of his adult life, Tim managed to set family apart from friends on his short journey here on planet Earth.  Tim was a longtime good friend to many of you who are here today.  The sad thing is, 40 years moved too fast and he left us too soon.  We are all one and have always been all one with Tim in our world.  Now we gather together on this day to celebrate Timothy’s life.

 

Tim’s early childhood was shared with his parents and older sister who resided in New York City where he was born, Long Island and Nashville.  At age five, his parents divorced.   Tim and sister Tammy moved with Nancy, his mother, to Holyoke Massachusetts, to reside briefly with his grandparents and then moved to several Connecticut towns … settling in Simsbury.  From age 8 or so, Tim travelled with Tammy to visit their father, Richard Mullaney, during summer vacations … many times back and forth to Africa, then to the Solomon Islands, Fiji and to the cabin in South Dakota.

 

In his early 20’s, Tim chose the direction of his own path going straight forward into his life it seems, leaving behind communications with his Muller family and Mullaney family:  his mother, father, sister, grand-parents, uncles, aunts, cousins, and nieces. 

 

A sincere wish is that this quote from Ernest Hemingway… whose work Tim kept,  is one Tim truly believed and would say to all of us himself:  

“I’m with you no matter what else you have in your head. 

I’m with you and I love you.”

 

Today, the Muller family and Mullaney family would quote Ernest Hemingway again and say to their beloved Timothy with heavy hearts: 

“No one you love is ever truly lost.”

 

 A quote from Tim’s mother, Nancy Muller:   

“I will always hold you in my heart, Tim.  I know you loved me – even at your distance.  I love you so very much.  I will forever cherish memories of you.   I held never-ending hope for you to come home.  Now I am looking for peace and understanding.  I wish peace to all of us, but especially to you, my dear son Tim.”

____________

 

A quote from Tim’s father, Richard Mullaney:

“When Timothy was young he liked to read the works of Henry David Thoreau.  Thoreau lived alone in the woods near Walden Pond in Massachusetts in the 1800s.  Thoreau wrote about what made a life worthwhile.  Timothy once told me that Thoreau had written:

 

“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.”

 

I believe this belief shaped Timothy’s view of how to live. 

 

He once told me another story about Thoreau.  While living quietly at Walden Pond, the police visited Thoreau and said he had not paid his taxes. Thoreau said he did not believe in taxes. Thoreau was put in jail. While in jail he was visited by his good friend Ralph Waldo Emerson, a famous writer. Emerson said to Thoreau “Henry, what are you doing in that jail?” and Thoreau responded “Ralph, what are you doing out of it?”  Thoreau’s beliefs were very personal and very strong. So to were Timothy’s.  Timothy did not talk about his beliefs much, but he definitely had a very strong set of rules that he followed.  

 

I have been living and working in Thailand for more than twelve years. Thailand is a Buddhist country, almost all the people are raised to be Buddhist and it is a way of life for them.  Every community in Thailand has a Buddhist Temple.  The temples have an official function, they record births and deaths in the community. When someone dies, they are cremated at the temple. No one here is buried and there are no funerals and no cemeteries. . A few days after the cremation, friends and relatives of the deceased are invited to the temple, in a quiet ceremony the monks chant for about half an hour. Then tea is served and people go home.  What do the monks chant about? Buddhists believe that when someone dies, the body dies but the spirit lives on. Buddhists believe in reincarnation. The monks chant is directed at the spirit world asking that the person’s spirit be reincarnated in a new good life.  Buddhists believe that all of us have lived lives in the past, and that we will have more lives in the future.  I find this belief very positive and comforting.  I have visited my local temple and have had the monks chant for Timothy. I hope that he has now been reincarnated into a new life. I wish him a good journey.”

_____________

 

Tim attended 3 Colleges:  South Dakota State University, Denver Colorado Metro State and Tunxis Community College.  He was an avid reader.  From an early age, Tim aspired to “spend as much time as possible studying, thinking about and writing about philosophy.”  (from a letter Tim wrote when he was eighteen to his mom).

 

Tim enjoyed working hard and had many jobs including:  cooking, farming, car parts store worker, lumber yard splitter, handyman, and landscaper.  For the past several years Tim worked as a carpenter.

 

Listening to good music and attending live music concerts was always a hobby of Tim’s.  He loved fishing, swimming, scuba diving and travelling.

 

Tim explored his personal strong sense of inner space that most of us either ignore… or take for granted.  He was an explorer of both the light and dark aspects of it.  He was a thinker and dreamer.

 

A close friend recently said, “Everyone who ever met Tim, liked him.”

 

 

 I would like to include this excerpt from:

The Prophet … Gibran’s Masterpiece –

On Children…   by Kahlil Gibran

 

And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, Speak to us of Children.

And he said:

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

 

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,

For they have their own thoughts.

 

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

 

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

 

You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.

 

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

 

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

 

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.

 

Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;

 

For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.(end)

 

In closing, we include another meaningful quote by Ernest Hemingway:

“Now is no time to think of what you do not have. 

Think of what you can do with that there is.”