Another eulogy

I don’t know what it says about my life that I haven’t found time to write a fun post about my ridiculous children in over a year but have had to deliver not one but two eulogies in a span of five months…let’s not think about it too much 😬

Yesterday we bid farewell to my one of a kind father. He was a difficult man to understand in life and I found the task of capturing him here just as challenging, but I was honored to try.

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When talking about my dad, everyone always spoke in superlatives: he wasn’t funny, he was the MOST hilarious person his friends ever met; his family didn’t think he was smart, we knew he was an absolute genius; and everyone from his daughters to the waiters he invariably overtipped knew he wasn’t just a generous soul, he was benevolent to the extreme.

And it’s all true: TJ Ryan wasn’t “a little bit” of anything. From his early days growing up in Montebello amidst his six much-loved siblings and countless friends, he was adored by all and it seemed universally agreed upon that he was destined for big things in life. “I’m a huge TJ fan,” one of his longtime friends once told me, and I was struck by his choice of words: my dad was a person who garnered admiration more than friendship.

He was so smart, charming, and charismatic as a teenager that his father envisioned for him a life in magnanimous politics, picking up the Kennedy mantle and using his power to help the little guy. What’s crazy is that that dream didn’t seem like an overreach to anyone who knew him: my mom says that when she married my dad, she thought perhaps someday she’d wind up in the White House. 

My dad was indeed enormously successful, even if he didn’t turn out to be the heir apparent to JFK. He went to Notre Dame and then to Southwestern Law School, meanwhile welcoming first one and then another daughter with his lovely young bride, never skipping a beat. To simply call him a “hard worker” would be wildly underselling the determination he had to succeed, and that persisted throughout his career as an attorney. He was a valued employee at several corporations before settling in at the water company, where he spent over 3 decades doing…well, I don’t know that any of us ever figured out what he actually DID there. Whatever it was, he was incredibly dedicated, rarely taking a well-deserved day off under even the most dire of circumstances, although he was known to skip out early to make it home for the first pitch of a critical Yankees game.

True to his personality, he always downplayed his achievements and career. He loved to say that he emulated George Costanza’s strategy of always acting annoyed to portray being swamped at work, and just recently told a relative who was surprised to hear he was still working that he was retired…but just hadn’t told them yet.

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He was a man of contradictions. He was the life of the party but more often than not could not be convinced to GO to the party. He felt emotions more deeply than most anyone, but made a near-constant ridiculous effort to be stoic. He undoubtedly cherished his family, but to say he largely let himself recede into the background would be an understatement – this was not a “father-daughter dance” kind of guy. 

There is no denying that he loved nothing more than his family, though – and it’s a good thing, too, because his adult life was dominated by the seemingly endless parade of children and later grandchildren that the universe bestowed upon him. Whenever I tell someone that I am one of 6 girls, the response is inevitable: “Wow, your poor dad!” But he never once made so much as a joke about having only daughters, although upon discovering that my mom’s final pregnancy was in fact TWINS, he did say, “well…one is bound to be a boy, at least!” He was wrong, but that’s the last we ever heard about a desire for a son.

No one loved babies like my dad, and not just his own. He always insisted on holding any baby he could get his hands on and could do so for hours, even if he made every mother in the vicinity go into a mild panic with his baby-holding technique, which consisted of tucking the child under one arm so he could roam about the house; one hand free to drink a Natty Light, queue up another Neil Young CD, or even tend to a barbeque (always keeping the baby turned at least slightly away from the open flames, of course). Once, I overheard him counseling a friend who was fretting about the perhaps too-early pregnancy of his daughter, and he said “friend, a baby is NEVER bad news.” Those simple words of wisdom were so sweet and said so much about my dad’s reverence for children and family that it brought tears to my eyes then and every time I’ve thought about it since. 

One of my dad’s favorite movies was Mr. Mom, and when I was three years old he had the once in a lifetime opportunity to BE Mr. Mom when a layoff at work left him home with 4 kids while my mom adopted the role of breadwinner for a year. He took to the job with gusto, shuttling my older sisters around to school and their activities in the infamous Hippy-Mobile and finding all kinds of ways to occupy himself all week, bringing me along on visits to Montebello to kill some time with my mom’s brothers and occasionally even attempting a household project or two, an undertaking that was decidedly NOT in this otherwise multi-talented individual’s wheelhouse. But in the words of Mr. Mom himself, “220, 221….whatever it takes.”

That year of domestic bliss aside, my memories of my dad revolve much more around him as a person than of him just being a father. He had strong opinions, passionate moral judgments, and could hold a petty grudge like no one else. He loved watching golf but refused to play, all thanks to one off-hand comment a coworker made to him approximately forty years ago. A Yankees pitcher could blow one game and he would forever deem him untrustworthy. I cannot tell you how many times I had to call him to make sure he was aware of a dramatic Yankees victory, because I knew he would rage-quit on a game when it went south and would have turned off the TV in disgust prior to the bottom of the inning! 

He loved certain things so much that they became deeply entwined with his persona. I’m sure none of us can think of Neil Young, The Cranberries, The Doors, Seinfeld, or The Brady Bunch without a vision of TJ Ryan singing or quoting along immediately popping into our heads. The Notre Dame and Yankees schedules were embedded in his brain every season, sometimes requiring careful planning around weddings or other events at which his appearance was required. And every time I watch Jeopardy, I can’t help but think “my dad totally would have known that one” about every question that stumps me.

He loved politics, or loved to hate them, more accurately. He loved Obama, every Kennedy, Rachel Maddow, and Jon Stewart. He was the quintessential liberal, never judging anyone except those he felt were morally in the wrong, always inclined to take the side of the underdog. He was “woke” long before woke was a thing. It’s a quality that permeated every part of his life and was passed down to so many, ensuring his legacy will live on in the form of generous donations and righteous protests for years to come. 

When my dad passed, I wanted some kind of physical memento of his to hold onto. In his closet, I found a ceramic mug I made for him in high school and was thrilled to find it full of vestiges of his life: photos of grandkids, prayer cards from every funeral he attended in the last decade, ticket stubs from Notre Dame games and Pretenders concerts, and even a receipt for a Yankees jacket he purchased years ago. Most endearingly, there was a beautiful photo of my mom from her high school days, the sight of which warmed my heart and seemed to complete a puzzle. Every item in the mug is so indicative of my dad’s life and love that it’s almost as if he placed them there with the express intent of telling a story. For all the frustrating contradictions we may have thought plagued him throughout his life, he was ultimately a person whose values and deep love for his family always found a way to shine through.

He was brilliant, he was infuriating, he was dynamic, he was deep, he was mysterious and hilarious and maddening and charming. We never figured him out, but the joke is on us, because I don’t think he wanted to be figured out. He was loved though, for everything and by everyone.

And it goes without saying, unfortunately, that he would have absolutely hated all of this attention.