Ryan James O'Sullivan

I had the great honour and privilege of  speaking at my Grandfather’s funeral.  Here is what I said (sadly I added a few ad-libbed anecdotes not here, when I do my full memorial post on the blog I hope I am able to share those memories with you):

Thank you everyone for coming today. Thank you for your support and for sharing in the rememberance of my Papa.

Today is a sad day, I’ve never known such profound sadness in my short time on this earth.  But I wanted to stand up here and talk to you all today because I don’t think my Papa would want us to be sad.  I think it would be important to him that we come away from here today remembering the good times and the joy he brought in to our lives.

I believe this because when I think back on my grandfather’s life I can’t find unhappieness before this last month.  He was a special man, I’ve never known anyone like him.  I’ve never known a man who so universally loved, a man whose smile and kind approach to life was so endearing.

I was lucky growing up instead of day care I got to spend my before and after school time with my grandparents.  It gave me a unique opportunity to spend time with them and the bonds we formed lasted a life time.  Some of my earliest and best memories are of spending time playing outside with Papa.  Walking Erin, my grandparents cocker spaniel.  Riding my tricycle.  Playing with whatever toy I was fascinated with at that moment.

All of this at my Papa’s side while we talked away… honestly we mostly talked about the weather.  If you ever wanted to know the weather back in those days you just had to ask one of us. (aside) Luckily we added the Blue Jays, Wayne Rooney and the price of gas to our conversational repertoire over the years.

Papa probably had the biggest impact on my life when he helped turn me in to a giant nerd.  He would actively encourage me and help me use his commodore 64 computer every day after school.  Later when he upgraded to an Amiga 500 he also introduced me to the world of pirated software.  Honestly, he had a collection of computer games that puts me to shame.

As I got older and was able to walk to school myself I was lucky that I still got to spend plenty of time with my grandparents.  Before and after school rituals were replaced with Sunday dinners and eventually the whole family started spending our summers together up north.  At an age when many kids start to spend less time with their family I was fortunate to, if anything, spend more.  It was great.

Over the years Papa and I got to spend summers together watching baseball, boating and even ATVing! (Papa got to see the Blue Jays win two world series in his life time, I likely will only get to see the Blue Jays win two world series in my life time as well).  While everyone else would go to bingo Papa and I would stay behind and chat about what was in the news while we’d watch the baseball game.

These are all great memories and only in the last few years have I really come to appreciate the net impact of them on me as a person.  I’ve come to realize that many of my best qualities have come from him.

I realize now that his “keep a smile” and optimistic approach to life has rubbed off on me.
That my ability to let things roll off my shoulder by and large comes from him.
That by being there for me through thick and thin, even retiring so he could spend more time with my sisters and I he taught me the value of love and family.

This was my Papa.  He was a special man who kept an optimistic smile, who let things roll off his shoulder and above all loved his family.

I am who I am today because of Papa, and for that I owe him more than simple words can express.  I’m thankful that I came to this realization well before today.  It gave me the opportunity to cherish these last few years, to fully appreciate everything he meant to me and my family.

I’m glad he got to meet and bond with my darling wife Tammy.

I’m glad that he and my daughter Paige were fast friends, the best of buds.

More than anything I’m glad for each of the 29 years we’ve got to spend together.

So I leave you now with only one request.  Leave here today glad about something he gave you.  He wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.

On August 27th my Grandfather passed away.  There’s many things I want to write to make sure he is appropriately remembered and so I can come back to the post and hopefully one day smile in recollection.

Now though there is only sadness, and I cannot find the words required to do him the justice he deserves.  So I will keep THIS post short and convey some of what happened.  I will come back when the black cloud has started to dissipate to really try and capture what he meant to me and my family.

Papa was taken away from us suddenly after complications arose from what can only be characterized by a mistake by a doctor.  He was given an unusually high dose of a, we now know, potentially dangerous medication.  He took this for six months without any monitoring or warning from the doctor.  The damage done to his lungs was something he could not fight back from, despite his very strong efforts in the last month.

On August 10th, after spending two weeks up north with us on our annual family vacation (thankfully due to my current employment situation I was able to be there for the full two weeks) our family doctor thought he had pneumonia so he sent him to the hospital.  Within three days he was moved to the ICU where he put up a hell of a fight for the next two weeks.  Within 24 hours of being put in the ICU a doctor spotted the irregular dosage and use of the medication in question and put an immediate stop to it.

We were told at this point he was now on a long road to recovery.  The medication would slowly leave his system and the damage to his lungs would begin to heal.  We visited him every day (my grandma not missing a minute of visiting hours) and we thought we’d have our Papa back within maybe not weeks, but months.

This past weekend we made a call to go up north and start packing down my grandparents place.  It put us 3 hours away from the hospital.  What could go wrong?  Papa was recovering.

After bingo on Saturday and just before we headed in to town to have some Dairy Queen and buy some lotto scratcher tickets the phone rang.  Papa was dying.  We likely wouldn’t make it back to the city.

We rushed back to the city, holding out some hope.  By the time we arrived (two hours to the hospital by the way, on a three hour drive.  We moved.) he had already left us.

There was nothing for us but a giant hole in our world.

I come from an extremely close family.  Papa has been part of my daily life since the day I was born.  I was lucky in that.

Our closeness amplifies the loss in ways I couldn’t imagine before this past week.  Our family’s collective being has been weakened and somehow we all know nothing will ever be the same again.

But we will go forward.  That’s what he’d want.  That’s the best way we could hope to honour his memory.

More to come…