(this is the speech I did not give at my father's funeral. Which version of him is true? Which version do I really believe? The truth is, I believe both, even if for many years I was more conscious of the previously published version. He was simultaneously a saint and a jerk, a genius and a fool, an egomaniac and a self-loather, and the innate division within himself caused him to suffer far more than he ever let on.)
I apologize for not giving this speech myself but I have barely slept in two nights and my very ability to speak and walk fluently is limited, and this hespit is sufficiently vulnerable that I may need to leave the room as it's delivered. But if I am anything at all, I am a writer, and if I can't rise to this occasion, what have I been working towards all these years?
Tucker men are small. We top up at about five and a half feet, but within that frame are giants. My grandfather was a giant. My uncle is a giant. My father was a giant. And over the course of our lives, we of the next generation strive to raise ourselves to their size just as our fathers did to the size of their father: a holocaust survivor who defied Nazis and bribed peasants so he might hide in barns and fields for years along with his wife and her sister on a steady diet of raw potatoes, his ability to do so abetted by the loyal peasant workers who loved working for him.
After the war, they were virtually the only Jewish family unit to emerge intact. It was only after the war that tragedy struck in the form of the Endex Polish nationalist party and a bullet for Dad's aunt Rokhel, and typhus for my aunt Tzipporah, of whom I imagine my father has finally met as she's watched him and Harold their whole lives long as they've grown into the stories America was meant for.
We were raised in the shadow of these legends, and who could hope to live up to their model? My father was daunted by the footsteps as indeed I remain daunted by his.
But this is not meant as a biography of my father, which I'm sure many people in this room can recite without aid. This is meant as a comment upon our relationship. I apologize for my self-indulgence, but it is impossible for me to comment on Jack Tucker objectively. My mother is the light of my life, but my father is its defining influence, and I will forever worry that I was the defining influence of his.
Jack Tucker hated the very idea of therapy, but we were, as the psychological term goes: enmeshed. It was impossible to avoid each other, comment on each other's slightest action to the seemingly eternal exasperation of one another. Even when we didn't live together, we were two bears in the same den. He was a hurricane of precisely the executive function I have struggled with all my life, and true to his hubris, thought he could instruct me in how to master it right to his final days.
The truth was that there was no description of our relationship that could not also be described as its opposite. We were best friends simultaneous to worst enemies. He was my greatest teacher even as he was my foremost intellectual opponent. He was the man whose approval I was desperate for more than any other, and I was the boy whose love he always doubted. Neither of us quite got what we wished out of each other even as our relationship reaped rewards that no other father son relationship ever could.
This is a man who could converse in seven languages, we all saw him do it. He mastered in school the highest levels of math, science, and especially history. He was a true success in business, an incredible pillar to his workers and his community, he should have been running a Fortune 500 company. Instead, he was our father.
Philip Roth has a great quote in American Pastoral which, I always thought, taken out of context, would describe him perfectly:
"a father for whom everything is an unshakeable duty, for whom there is a right way and a wrong way and nothing in between."
The Jack Tucker who presented himself to the public: the endless font of comic entertainment, was the precise opposite of whom he was in private. He was every bit the giving, affectionate, responsible man you all know and love. So many of these born entertainers are irresponsible in their personal lives, but Jack Tucker so defined responsibility that he viewed loved ones in his life who took less than 200% responsibility for their actions as a personal affront. We all strived to live up to his example, but who possibly could to a brilliant man who decided to put nearly 100% of his brilliance at the service of his family? There was always a cup washed the wrong way, a piece of fruit past ripe, a sauce that didn't need to be bought, a meal chewed too fast. He was the most responsible, giving father for whom any son could ever ask. He also at times seemed like a walking maintenance list.
But there was hardly ever a day when he didn't say I love you and give a huge hug that seemed desperate for love back to equal his. I would say I love you back, but he'd respond 'Yeah but I mean it.'
Dad, I believe you're listening. I believe you're here. I believe you are everywhere I will ever be even as you go to Olam HaBa and are currently lecturing G-d on the various hypocrisies of the Bible.
And I want you to know: I love you. I have always loved you. I will always love you. You have been the defining influence of my life. For much of it, being your son was a joy, and being your son was always an honor. You were the Jupiter around which I was a mere moon, and without orbiting you, I worry that I will be hurtled into space. I will try as I can to follow in the examples you set, and I will honor you all the days of my life. I love you every bit as much as you love me. And even as I'll miss you, I know you will always be with me.
You wanted me to be your Kaddishzogger, and you said that in my eyes you would become the saint in death that you never were in life. You were no saint, but I already revered you in life even as we were often furious at each other. How can I miss you when your voice is already needling me through the day. I'd imagine it will be giving me unsolicited comments on my responsibilities, on my vacations, my projects, my music, even on my writing.
Your neshawma will always be there. I believe that. I believed in every good intention you ever had. And I love you so much.
Amen
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