The Poem I Wrote on My Phone During My Father's Eulogy
I couldn't speak. So I typed.
I was supposed to speak at my father's funeral. I had written a eulogy, the kind you write when you are trying to be a good son, the kind that is true and safe and says the things everyone expects. I had practiced it in the car on the way to the crematorium, and I had it memorised by the time I stood at the lectern.
I opened my mouth to speak and nothing came out. Not a word. The grief was too big and the room was too quiet and I stood there for a full minute, looking at the people who had loved him, and I could not speak.
So I took out my phone and I typed. I typed the poem that was actually in me, not the eulogy I had written but the thing I was actually feeling. It was about the way he held a cup of tea with both hands, like the warmth was the point. It was about the sound his keys made in the door at six in the evening. It was about the specific way he said my name, like he was still surprised I had turned out to be a person.
I typed it in the notes app, standing at the lectern, while the room waited. It took me four minutes. Then I read it out loud, off the phone, and I didn't cry until the last line, and then I cried for the whole last line.
Afterwards, people came up to me and said it was the best eulogy they had ever heard. I didn't tell them it was a poem. I didn't tell them I had written it on my phone in the middle of my father's funeral because the eulogy I had practiced was a lie and the poem was the truth.
The poem is still in my notes app. I have never edited it. I have never moved it to a document or a notebook. It is where it was written, on the phone, at the funeral, the proof that sometimes the thing you cannot say is the thing you have to type.
By Team Writory, for Writory.
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