Good afternoon, and thanks for coming to this memorial service for my Dad, Edward M Musto Sr. During times like this, I often think back on some of the writers from millennia ago, who I think recognized the nature of our existence. Paraphrasing Ecclesiastes:
There is a time for everything,
a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
So here we are, taking some time to mourn and remember, following my Dad’s "time to die" and I’ll take a little of your time today to eulogize my Dad and remember together some of those things which I think marked his life.
In a movie my wife Janet and I like, one of the main characters is searching for the right words to comfort the movie’s protagonist following the total failure of his quest to meet a woman. He observes, "You know the Greeks didn't write obituaries. They only asked one question after a man died: "Did he have passion?". While the claim is fictional, I’ve always liked the sentiment.
In the past few weeks, with Dad’s recent extended hospitalization and then his return to the medical rehab floor here at the Atrium, my brother, sister and Mom were often asked what Dad liked to do and what his hobbies were. Even after close to 24 years of retirement, none of us had a real good answer to that query (except for the occasional Dallas Cowboys game). I think truly my Dad’s passion was his family and the pursuit of those things which he thought would benefit it and I think that passion was witnessed in a number of his actions, both big and small, in his lifetime.
My Mom tells me sometime after I started walking as a toddler, we went out for a weekend walk with Dad. Dad watched with some concern as I lit out for whatever destination I could reach with my two little legs and remarked, "Don’t you think you should stop him?". My Mom responded, "Oh don’t worry, he goes just far enough so he can still see you" (a habit I should mention which continued for the next 60 plus years). And my Dad, years later, said, "We should’ve stopped you", but he never did, and, for me, it sort of defined his presence in my life. He watched, and expressed concern (and occasional disapproval), but he was always there, whether to simply make plain to acquaintances the blood bond we shared or slip me a few twenties for gas as I would depart for wherever I called home and he never stopped me.
Dad’s definition of family members deserving of his time, support and largesse was an expansive one. It included all his grandchildren, his in-laws, and the various nieces and nephews who comprised our extended family. When my cousin Artie had a rather violent nervous breakdown in his late teens, it was my Dad who helped to restrain him before my Aunt could get the necessary help. When my Mom’s mother (my grandmother) started to disappear into the soft fog of Alzheimer’s it was my Dad who provided logistical support (even when not necessarily happy about it). During one of my grandmother’s episodes, she lost her purse which held her keys and ID. My Dad replaced her apartment door locks and got the other necessary replacement items. We traveled down to her Union City apartment, and Dad presented my grandma with her new purse.
"Alright Tina, this is your new purse and keys" (holding the purse and keys in front of her). "Do you understand? These are your new ones."
My grandmother looked quizzically at the new purse and keys and protested, "That’s not my purse".
Dad (I’m guessing reminding himself this was his declining mother-in-law) responded, "Tina, you lost your purse. This is your new one."
But my grandmother reaffirmed, "That’s not my purse".
Dad, hesitated for a smidge, and then challenged her, "Alright Tina, so where’s "your" purse?" and my grandmother, not missing a beat, retreated to the rear storage closet in her apartment and returned with her purse and the old keys securely nested within it.
Dad said nothing then or after, but my brother and I often laughed about the look on his face when Grandma returned with her purse.
Dad worried about things. His childhood had seen challenges, financial and the impact of family members I’ll only characterize as "interesting", but as they say, "the child is father to the man" and I don’t think Dad ever forgot.
He worried about money, even though him and my Mom had done well. Every semester, when my brother’s and mine Ivy League tuition bills were issued, my Dad would insist at the kitchen table for a few hours that it just couldn’t be done. Of course, he always wrote the necessary check (because we were his sons), but not without our biannual kitchen table tradition.
He worried about his health and becoming disabled because he had witnessed both of those outcomes and their effect on people’s lives. We went through a time in his sixties, when he told me his philosophy was, "Find something bad, just cut it out." Of the slings and arrows due his increasing years, he would only remark (when laughing), "Well, it’s better than the alternative."
And honestly, what I’ll miss most about my Dad will be talking to him and his laughing when I told him some tall tale (or real one) of my life. He liked a good joke and appreciated irony. In his prime, his favorite time was having all his children and their children gathered together and simply talking with them, because, as I’ve already mentioned, his passion was his family.
Of course, toward the end, we observed in my Dad’s declining physical health, that sometimes the capability to simply continue to breathe, is not better than the alternative. Our ends are all certain, with only circumstances and timing left to be determined. I remind myself today and in the days since Dad’s passing, that he’s only gone before us. I would also observe that in so much of the Bible, one of the most common exhortation to us is God’s words to, "Fear not". More than once in Dad’s later years he told me he had worried too much and that everything seemed to work out alright in the end. I think of Dad’s final night in that light. Given his physical reality, his continuing confinement to a bed, and a life lived long and well, a quick passing in his sleep was truly a blessing.
In his last few days we all received phone messages which I was never sure were intended or just mistranslations by my cell phone voice translator. One of my last ones from Dad was, "I’ve just landed, I’ll call you tomorrow". Although I smile at his last message to me, I’m glad Dad made his last connecting flight here at the Atrium, which although not his home for as long as Mountainside, or North Bergen, was his home the night he departed on his last flight to eternity. I’ll conclude with a poem written by a pilot, but I think true of all our flights, including our last one.
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, --and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of --Wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air...
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark or even eagle flew --
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
