As I shared two weeks ago, my FIL passed away recently.  His memorial service was on Saturday in SpermLand.

On Thursday afternoon my Bride called and asked me to write and present his eulogy at the memorial service.  So of course, I did. 

While I didn't have a lot of respect for many of the decisions my FIL made in life I respected him as a good man, a loving father, a dedicated husband and a very passionate and committed farmer.  He loved to farm and he was proud of his two sons for following in his foot steps.

That said..... it took me about 20mins to type up a 6 page honorarium to his life.  It took me more than 4 hours to edit it down to 2.5 pages.  I had to remove some less than flattering references to my crook thieving waste of skin of a SIL, among a few other references to various shitty things that extended family had done to my FIL over the years.

Ultimately I decided that honoring him was far more important than exposing the asses of idiots.

I did not share the eulogy with anyone before presenting it at the memorial service so it was fresh for everyone.  I did mention one reference I had made about my thieving SIL with my bride and our son who was able to get leave to fly in from Germany.  I was expounding on my FIL as a father and husband and one thing I referenced was that he was a bank.  The next line was "and some of his kids even paid him back".  I removed that line but apparently I did not make that  clear when talking to my wife and son about it

So the next day when I was presenting the eulogy and said "And as most parents are, sometimes (FIL) was a bank.", my kid's eyes about popped out of his head.  Fortunately everyone laughed so when I cracked up over the look on my son's face it was not out of line.  The service went well.  My MIL named me the MC for the event so I had to do everything including the eulogy.  Being the senior Outlaw of the clan (our term for the 4 or us who are married to my IL's children) apparently means that the stuff other's can't get through falls on me.  Which was fine I suppose.

It was awesome to see my kid.  We did not expect him to be able to get leave but his leadership made it happen so he could be there for the memorial service.  The USAF has my respect for making that happen.

What a wonderful man he has turned out to be. He got in on Thursday evening and didn't leave his mother's side the whole weekend.  He kept her laughing, helped with everything including dusting my IL's toxic waste dump of a house, he set up and took down most of the display items at the memorial service, he cleaned up, he entertained his 5 younger cousins (9mos-14), he escorted his mom and GM, he opened doors for the ladies, he engaged in conversation with everyone, etc, etc, etc...

I had several people approach me to shake my hand and tell me what a wonderful man my son is.  Most of them said kid, but at nearly 26 (in one month) my kid... is a kid no longer.