A Eulogy for Tom
This is a eulogy for Tom (name changed), who was my former stepfather. He passed away recently. I decided to share it because I think it’s an interesting story and there’s a life lesson in it. Comments are off on this one.
Tom was born in the Midwest in the late 1940s. His family was dirt poor, his mom was a sweet and very religious lady, his father died on the younger side and he had two older brothers (who also both died relatively young, in their 50s and 60s). Tom was physically very strong and he started working out young and became a bouncer, and also an enforcer of sorts for shady characters (I don’t have much of the details on this part of his life). As a bouncer and in his free time he got involved in lots of fights, which he excelled at; he even had the indentations of a guy’s teeth in his knuckles. I think he helped crack down on Vietnam anti-war protesters at one point. He drank a lot and rode motorcycles and started competing in bodybuilding, which was a new trend sweeping the country. He eventually became a professional bodybuilder, in addition to continuing bouncing and the other activities he was involved in, although he didn’t make the upper echelons of the sport; he said he didn’t have the genetics to make it to the very top (he didn’t say this bitterly, just matter-of-factly). He was open about his steroid use, which was essentially required at the time to compete. My mother and Tom started dating, he moved in with her, and they eventually married. This was to be his third marriage; the first two he entered into out of convenience, but it was my mother who really captured his heart.
As a stepfather Tom mostly stayed out of the child-rearing, although he would occasionally get involved in discipline. I was a very difficult child - both for genetic reasons and because children of divorce are totally screwed up and have much worse life outcomes than parents who stay together, as I previously discussed - and mouthed off a lot. One time Tom threw me in the bath with my clothes on after I refused to take a bath, and another time I wrote a note saying “fuck you” to my mom, so Tom came into my room and punched two holes in the wall next to my head. Another time my sibling forgot to empty the cat litter when told to, so he dumped the cat litter on the sibling’s bed. But those were very rare events. As I grew up Tom tried to get me into weightlifting - he was a good teacher, but I had neither the genetics nor the inclination for it - and he taught me the basics of shooting (he won some local competitions and owned quite a few guns). He also taught me the value of keeping my word - “a man’s only as good as his word” - and he was pro-environment and anti-real estate development. I would describe his politics as “don’t tread on me” right-leaning libertarian, he was into prepper culture, and he was totally secular - maybe an atheist - although we celebrated Christmas every year and he would dress up as Santa. He mostly stayed out of family events but he would go to them a couple times a year for my mother.
His dream was always to leave our area and head to the Pacific Northwest. We left for suburbia and then they eventually moved to a rural, remote area where they had 30 acres. Tom spent his time chopping down trees, shoveling snow, shooting, feeding the wild turkeys, and enjoying life. Eventually, though, it came apart; he grew addicted to pain medication - from all the fights over the years, plus the steroid use and a bunch of operations (he had a number of motorcycle accidents, twice in the same spot, where he broke multiple bones) - and he was stealing my mom’s pain meds. Worse, he was complaining all the time about politics and other things; having achieved his dream, he didn’t develop new dreams. He still worked out and shot guns but he grew complacent and settled into his life and my mom lost the spark for him and they ended up divorcing. He didn’t fight it, he loved her and let her do what she wanted; he moved back to the Midwest to the town of his birth, quite poor and living on social security (he thought he would end up living homeless under a bridge like a weightlifting friend of his, but a childhood friendship saved him from this). He could have easily trained others in weightlifting or guns as he was an excellent teacher, but I guess he was past the point of wanting to do that, depressed, and he got back into drinking (he was a teetotaler for many years while with my mother, given his alcoholic background).
I didn’t speak to him much over the past couple of years - he had a hearing aid but was still hard of hearing on the phone, and it was also hard to talk to him because he was still pining for my mother, who he would call weekly. But he always told me he had one good fight left in him - I believed him, he could easily kick my ass well into old age. One of his close friends told me that he went with Tom to a bar a couple years ago and Tom, drunk, instigated a fight with three young and powerful loggers, and his friend watched him knocked all three out with ease. I believe it. This was not a guy one physically stepped to (or was goaded into stepping to) without paying a big price.
Regarding his death, he had an aneurism that went to his brain and, while I don’t have the details, I think he passed within a couple of days. I was surprised as he was so hardy that I expected him to come out of it like he had survived everything else, but apparently he had become quite alcoholic and that played a contributing role. I felt sadness hearing about it; time is going by so quickly, it's a blur - blink and you wake up decades older, reminding me of the Kenny Chesney song. Tom wanted to be cremated - he did not want to have a funeral, and given he had no children (he never wanted any of his own) and no other family, just his childhood friend left, I felt it appropriate to share his story somewhere. I’ll take his ashes if my mom doesn’t want them and spread them somewhere in nature, which he loved. He was one of the earlier boomers, and they are starting to die at a much faster rate, a rate that will accelerate into the next five years - a scary thing because it means everyone else is closer up to deck, plus boomers, despite their generally materialist, prosperity-oriented and atomized attitudes, really knew how to do things in the trades that younger generations have mostly forgotten - they were analog while millennials are digital, and analog is necessary to keep basic society running.
The main lesson I take away from Tom (and there are a number of more colorful stories I don’t feel comfortable sharing) is how important it is to not rest on your laurels, don’t achieve your vision and then stop; one must always be striving to learn more, grow more, develop more spiritually, intellectually, in the material world, whatever it is - because if you don’t, one’s life and the world generally may develop in ways that one really doesn’t expect or want. This is also why it seems like retirees age much faster and die much faster than older people who keep sharp and continue working.
I wonder if Tom will come to me in a dream. I was dreading the possibility the night I heard of his passing - I think because my dreams are usually extremely dark nightmares - but he hasn’t yet appeared. I’m not sure if there was much left unsaid between us; I don’t think so. Another good friend of mine who killed himself has also not appeared to me in dreams, as I also didn’t think there was much if anything left unsaid between us (while others who have passed, such as a close mentor in adulthood, has appeared multiple times). Even though we didn’t speak much the past couple of years, I appreciate the influence he’s had in my life and I love him.
Rest in peace Tom. I hope I will see you again.