My father died on September 8, 2026. His wife asked me to speak at his funeral. These are my words. I wasn’t kidding when I said “It’s Complicated.”
Thank you all for being here. Saying goodbye to someone as complicated as my father is a strange thing. I suspect most of us walked in today carrying a mix of feelings, and some of us are still sorting out which ones we’re allowed to have. All of them. You’re allowed all of them. Thank you for the way you’ve wrapped around Maggie these past few weeks. And to our family, thank you for being here. Wherever each of us stood with him, today marks a turning point for all of us, and I’m grateful we’re facing it together.
My father had two children. The sarcastic, acerbic, witty one, and my brother. So you know what you’re in for. Pops never sugarcoated anything in his life, and it doesn’t seem right to start now on his behalf.
Everyone I’ve spoken to since his passing has made mention of how difficult he could be. Some people used a shorter word.
I’m not going to stand up here and tell you they were wrong. He was bossy. He was stubborn. He was sure he was right, and he’d tell you so, loudly, partly because he believed it, and partly because he refused to wear his hearing aids. But I want to spend a few minutes on where he came from, because I think it explains some things. It doesn’t excuse them. It explains them.
Maggie asked me to read the Special Forces Creed today, the oath Pops took when he earned his Green Beret. Reading it, I realized it might be the closest thing to an owner’s manual for my father that exists. That’s not because he lived up to every line. It’s because you can see him in almost all of them, the best of him and the worst.
It begins, “I am a volunteer, knowing well the hazards of my profession.” Pops didn’t volunteer for most of the hazards in his life. He had polio as a baby. His father walked out. His mother drank. While he was in Vietnam he sent money home to be saved for his return, and she spent it, so when he brought my mother and me back to this country, there was nothing waiting. No one was at the airport to meet us.
A man who got that little from the people who were supposed to take care of him could have written them all off. He didn’t. He made peace with his parents and stayed with them until the end. He kept showing up to family get-togethers. Frequently he threw in a fight at no extra charge. The creed says, “I will never surrender though I be the last.” As most of us probably experienced, Pops applied that line to every argument he ever had. But he kept coming back to the table. Not to be right, but to be with us.
Pops met my mom in Vietnam, and I happened. My mother’s father was a senior officer in the South Vietnamese army, and he knew exactly how those stories usually ended for the women and children left behind. So he made sure that wouldn’t be our fate. The creed says, “I will not bring shame upon myself or the Forces.” Between the Army and my grandfather, Pops got some very clear help with that one.
But the creed also says, “I will not fail those with whom I serve.” And he came back. A lot of men didn’t. He came back for us, and he brought us home.
A year after we got here, Daryl Saint George Tilley IV, or D as we called him, came along, and he was the favorite. Pops told us so, more than once, because he was never one to soften something he believed was true. Clearly that’s where I get it from. That doesn’t mean he didn’t love me or wasn’t proud of me. But we all have our ranks, and we knew ours.
Then we lost D. The creed says, “I serve with the memory of those who have gone before me.” Pops carried that memory every day, and I don’t think he ever found his footing again. The hard parts of him got harder. He held on tighter to what he could control, maybe because the one thing he most wanted to hold on to was gone.
The creed warns that he would be called on to work “in isolation, far from familiar faces and voices.” Toward the end, a lot of that isolation was his own doing. He pushed a lot of people away. But, despite his best efforts, not Maggie.
Maggie, years ago, D and I each sat Pops down, separately and without comparing notes, and told him the same thing: don’t screw this up. Of all the women we’d met over the years, you were the keeper, and if he blew it, he’d probably die alone. D and I didn’t agree on much, so when we did, Pops should have known it was serious. For once, he actually listened. You were with him through the hardest version of him, and everyone here knows that wasn’t easy. Thank you for taking care of him, and loving all of us.
“I will keep my mind and body clean, alert, and strong.” His body let him down before he could walk, and a few years ago his mind started letting him down too. He fought both. He didn’t know how to do anything else.
So who was my father? He was difficult. He was controlling. He could be, to use that shorter word, an ass. He was also a kid who got a raw deal from almost everyone who was supposed to look out for him, and he kept trying anyway. The creed says his goal was “to succeed in any mission, and to live to succeed again.” He didn’t succeed at all of them. But he kept going back in.
He wasn’t an easy man to love. But he was ours, and he tried.
I hope wherever he is now, he’s with D, he can hear just fine, and not only does he understand he’s not in charge, but he’s really good with that.