Allen Busby
This is going to be sorta long ....(I’m still processing this and I’m pretty raw about it right now) I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to thank every person who has given a kind thought or word about my father these last few days.They say in every persons life there are moments where time stops. I was blessed to have been able to be there as my father left that worn out shell and all the weight of the world. I feel guilty about that because so many other people deserved to have that moment. I never really understood my father until that second. By the time my brother and I came into this old world my father had lost so much. I never really considered it because he never really talked much about it. When he did it was mainly about how much he missed my brothers and sister. I only had a second or maybe all the time in the world because my father was already home. I think he looked back long enough to unburden me from living with the guilt of having held him to a measure that was just not fair. In that second, that last look, I saw him for the man he really was, a man who woke up everyday burdened with loss from a chapter of life I never really understood or gave consideration too. That man was utterly shattered by the world and still he had a courage I have only witnessed in very few people. I wish more people could have been with him in that moment.
“If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
-Rudyard Kipling