Last week at the hospital, Hillary, my stepmother, told me that my father wanted me to speak at his funeral. That was an honor like no other but also a huge pressure.

How could I write something—anything—that would compare to what my father would say on such an occasion?

His wanting me to do this was his way of showing his faith in me about this most important thing that we share: the ability to turn experience into words, to find the right way to say that which is so hard to express.

He must have known that I would struggle to find the words to convey the many layers of the man; that I would honor him and do him justice. Dad, I’m going to try to get it right.

Hillary also said that my father wanted me to read a poem and that I’d know which one.

Hmmmm. I was stumped. And then I felt pressure. Was it something by Yeats, Shakespeare or Frank O’Hara? I really didn’t know what poem he was talking about. And I was stressed.

But then it came to me, he probably meant the last two pages of The House at Pooh Corner by AA Milne, a book he cherished. I read this section at my high school graduation and my father was moved to tears.

So I am putting all my grief, shock, and numbness into the writing of this eulogy. At my computer is the only place I want to be right now tinkering with it, making it better, adding things, trying to write something worthy of the man.