The minister took a deep breath, looked to his left where an Asian man was sitting in a wheelchair, and started talking.
“Karl Park, here, asked me to read this eulogy for him. Some of you may know Karl. Here is what he wishes you to know.
“Jerry was playing cards all day, in silence, a cigarette burning his lips and eyes permanently squinting, which served him well at poker. He read silence like no one I knew. Not only did he detect a player’s bluff a mile away, he could tell his cards before they were laid down. He had little use for words. Also, I never saw him use a match or a lighter as he always lit his first cigarette from the flame of the gas stove in the morning, and then each cigarette from the previous one after that. Starting around 12, he was stealing Marlboro’s from uncle Tits. He switched to Camel’s when he could buy his own. He learned to play cards in the Korean War and then on the job, in the Northwest Territories, with other gold or diamond miners. There rarely was much else to do after work, aside from going out to town once a week. He said no woman would live with an old man who’d been a bachelor all is life. Not one bit of bitterness mind you. I think he was just content, set in his own ways, and he liked his quiet space; he wouldn’t want anyone to disturb that, not even a woman.
“I didn’t know Jerry from his talking except for one story. Jerry’s uncle’s real name was Dick for those of you who didn’t know. Dick wasn’t married so his teenage nephews joked about his manhood. Jerry called him Tits one day and the name was disclosed openly by accident and it stuck. Of course later Jerry understood better about being a bachelor and that it did not mean anything about one’s manhood, but it was too late.
“As some of you know, for the last three years Jerry has invited me home with him. But perhaps very few of you know how that happened. He was very private and perhaps laughed inwardly at the rumors that came of it.
“When Jerry went to Korea, the cold weather affected him and many of his friends got lasting injuries from frostbite. My dad was one of them. He came back and lost his hands and feet, and his ears and nose had frozen and decayed. My mom had a hard time in South Korea with her neighbors because of my mixed race and she and my dad worked it out so at 3 or 4, I was sent to stay with my dad. He was receiving a small disability stipend, but when I arrived he needed more money and he started selling newspapers. We went together, and, older, I started selling newspapers at a different neighborhood from his. Most everyday, we went to the park, side by side, by wheelchair. His disability was from frostbite and I was born with severe cerebral palsy. But how could it matter now, if it was from birth or not? What mattered was we traveled the same way and that was something we shared.
“Three years ago Jerry came to visit my dad. He had just retired as a miner. He did not know about me; my dad had never told him. My dad explained he had been eaten up by gangrene, he was done for, dinner. Jerry had come at the right time. He died in Jerry’s arms. Jerry insisted I come home with him.
“Now Jerry’s lungs have given up to cancer. If I had more flexibility, he would have been in my arms at the end, just like he did for my dad. In the three years we spent together we rarely spoke because that’s painful for me and because he didn’t care to. But we shared something deeper: we shared each other’s silence. It did not take him long to know what I thought about or needed and, when his lungs started to give up for real, I knew what he was thinking about or needed. So at the end, in our silence, his eyes were far from speechless; I saw his love, I felt his love. He worried about what would happen to me, I could tell. But he was so glad we had met and had this time together. And the best for me is how much I could see that he loved my father. I needed that above all. God bless you!”
With the minister’s last words, Karl, eyes welling up, joined his stiff hands together to his heart with some difficulty, yet much grace, and bowed to the congregation.
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