Tell them.
In loving memory of my father
The room was large, bifurcated by a wall divider that had been opened for the occasion. People milled about, standing for the most part, huddled in groups of three or four. Mentally, I was focused on the guests: whose face did I just glimpse that I hadn’t yet greeted? Was it a bit too chilly in here? I drew the shawl around my shoulders a little more tightly.
My energy flagged. Stepping out into the hallway for a brief respite, I scanned the room. There, to my right, I saw my mother. Her blonde hair was easy to spot, and she chatted animatedly to my aunt, waving her hands for emphasis as she always did.
In front of me and also to the right, further back in the room, I discerned my brother’s profile. I felt a surge of affection as I saw his hands in the pockets of the suit I had gifted him years earlier.
Next, I automatically scanned for the final person I was searching for – the person whose presence I really was looking for most.
My breath caught in my throat, and I nearly stumbled with the force of the realization as it hit me. Papa, I thought. I was looking for Papa. And he was there, unseen, into the room and at my left. But he wasn’t sitting patiently for me to walk into the room and sit beside him.
He was lying prone, hands folded, in a coffin. We were at his funeral.
Something about the room and seeing so many familiar people together had momentarily caused my brain to glitch, sending me back in time to look to Papa for anchoring, just as I used to, as a child.
Closing my eyes, I mentally reached forward, hesitantly, towards the place in the room where he lay. Yes, I thought. There he is. I can feel him.
To know my father was an experience. Some people have an energy that draws you in like a flash of colour that makes you do a double take. Others grow on you over time – maybe you didn’t think they were that funny at first, or you were distracted by the glasses they wore. And some people flit about, never truly landing here or there.
My father was not like any of these things. No, his energy was muted, subtler, and deeper.
His presence in the room was like the part of the ocean beyond the waves, where the water is dark and blue and still.
To know my father, that essence in the room I searched for absentmindedly, is to know how it feels when you lie beneath a cozy, weighted blanket that enables your heart to finally still its pitter-patter.
It’s the feeling of being in front of a living room fire on a cold winter’s night. It’s the dependability we place on our train drivers and our pilots, on our firefighters and our postmen, people who we trust to simply know what needs to be done and people we trust to do it best.
It’s the low bass note that gives a chord depth and density, so that its vibration can lodge somewhere in your chest.
It’s the feeling when you scan a room full of people, and your gaze lands on the person who you simply like the best.
To know my father was to know his energy, the way you felt around him rather than what he said or did. He spoke seldom, he thought deeply, he decided carefully, he fought forcefully.
When he began chemo treatment, I strove to understand how it might feel. How did he keep going when he must have been so, so tired? How did he find it within himself to go through the motions – buttoning his shirt when the neuropathy made his fingers fumble – when he knew that his condition was incurable?
I observe, and ask, and strive to add detail to my perspective so that I can do the work to empathize. Yet this kind of grit was like nothing I had seen before. No, this was a deep, internal battle between his mind and his body happening far below the surface where the light doesn’t reach.
For sixteen months, he suffered an alien invader in his body. For sixteen months, he battled nobly and righteously, St. Michael slaying the dragon. For sixteen months, he grit his teeth and rose – again, and again, and again – to fight just one more day.
An inner resolve like that is rare. It is one we could do nothing but witness in its faltering splendour.
In the end, it wasn’t the cancer that got him. It was the way that his body could no longer sustain the assault it experienced from many, many different fronts.
Sepsis. Procedures. Fevers, infections, internal bleeding. This was a man who went down fighting to his last, ragged breath.
I don’t know if you know anyone like that. If you do, tell them. Tell them you see them in their quiet pain, their inner steel, their noble diligence to something more important than themselves.
Tell them you are grateful for their stable minds. Tell them you love their predictability and progress.
Tell them you admire their essence.
Tell them, now, before it’s too late.
Robert Alexander Boresta died on January 12th, 2025. Today would have been his sixty-eighth birthday.
You can view his obituary here, which links to a recording of his funeral service.
If you would like to contribute to cancer research, please consider donating to Project Purple, a non-profit dedicated to create a world without Pancreatic Cancer.
My brother Domenic is fundraising on their behalf, and will be running the New York City Marathon in my father’s memory, and in his honour.
This is beautiful and so sincerely heartfelt. I feel how deeply you loved him and how profound is your loss. He was a lucky man to have you and you, him.
This is a really lovely tribute Giselle, I'm so sorry for your loss.