My dear friend, Virginia Newell, was concerned for me when I told her I was going to give a eulogy at Dad’s funeral. I was telling her about it, as I was going into shock, just a few hours after Dad passed over.

My mother has also put considerable weight on my shoulders. She tells me that it falls to me to describe, to all of you, my father. To sum up the man he was.

To our friends who didn’t know him, but knew me and my brothers and sisters and mother. To family who saw him grow up and who have been close to him in life and now in death. And to my mother and brothers and sisters, whose lives are so bound up in his that the process of unravelling him from us and our thoughts and feelings will take years.

I will fail in this task. Words are crude and clumsy and can’t capture the spirit of my father. I can’t convey to you how much I cared for and respected and loved Dad. I can’t describe how much bleaker and less colourful the world is, now he has passed on.

What I can do is try and recall some of the times he and I and my mother and brothers and sisters shared and give you some feeling of the bond between all of us.

I can’t tell you the entire story of my dad. My life is only a part of his. I can’t tell you the story of a young man from a small town in Malaysia who took his courage in his hands and left his home and country forever to chance his fortune in Australia. I can’t tell you about how he and Mum met at Uni. and married. I can’t describe the ironically tragic days where he watched his mother-in-law struggle and fight and ultimately lose her battle with cancer, and how he watched a person he loved like a friend, as well as the mother of his wife, pass away without being able to do a thing about it. These stories predate me and I have no wish to tell you about things secondhand.

But let me tell you about what I saw of him, starting at the end, where he faced his death on that terrible and tragic night and morning, this Tuesday and Wednesday. When all hope was gone and the pain was too great and the fight was unwinnable. And when the morphine hit him and he slept quietly surrounded by his family and brothers and sisters. And I thought that I would break inside because my father was dying and I couldn’t save him. And the room was so still and quiet and the tragedy seemed to blacken everything.

And then I heard my mother quietly talking to him and reminding him of all the crazy and wonderful times they had shared. And the troubles he had got them into - and out of - and the adventures in which she had always been the sensible and rational partner to his dangerous combination of unbounded optimism and endless enthusiasm.

And then I heard my sister, Rebecca joining in, telling him she remembered how his love of his children and fun always overrode common sense. And how he had always taught her that good fun and good times were worth it. And the games he would play and the stories he would read to her and tell her as a child.

And Joanna, my big sister whose curse over the last few weeks was that she knew too much about medicine and could not ignore the evidence she saw in the tests and scans, and who has cried more tears than any of us in these sad days, she laughed as she told him of the time when she was in her second year of Uni. and with two weeks to go before the exams she rang home, crying like a child because she had done no study for a year and couldn’t pass her exams. And how Dad had caught a bus to Sydney and told her, "Okay, this fight is lost, but we’re still going to try." And how he had played nursemaid to her, cooking and cleaning and talking her up like a coach while she studied night and day. And even I can remember the shocked and appalled expression on his face when, having passed all her units, Jo announced that she intended to appeal one of the scores because she deserved a credit.

And suddenly I was laughing and remembering the man he was, and not the person lying there before me. And I was telling him my own recollections and it carried me back twenty years, to the days when he would take us down to the Cotter river in summer and we would build rafts made of logs and kindling, and on days of total fire ban, we would set fire to those suckers and sail them down the river. I remember throwing stones at them as we tried to sink them before they got out of sight. Often as not, we’d fail and a burning collection of sticks and wood would sail around the river bend perhaps to lodge in the tinder dry grass that grew along the bank there. I’m not sure now but I don’t think I heard any reports of bush fires on those days. And I laughed and I asked him, "I was seven and didn’t know any better. What is your excuse?"

My Aunt Janet told him she still recalled how the pair of them would make homemade fireworks out of calcium carbonate and bamboo tubes. And how she had lost hair and eyebrows when he had sent her back to relight one that had failed to explode. Which made me laugh when I had to recall how Dad had bought tons of fireworks for us as kids and encouraged us to ignore all the safety instructions. How we would hold shooters in our hands or launch po-has with sling-shots. I tell you all now that if fireworks are banned in the ACT, my dad had no small part to play.

We remembered his forays into diplomacy and peacemaking. How he once told my little brother that when was a kid back in Malaysia, a kid had picked on him and how he had sat in the middle of the public square with a stone and a woodcutting axe. And when villagers would ask him what he was doing, he told them he was sharpening the axe to kill that kid. To this day, I don’t know whether the story is true or not, but I know that Dad should have known better than to tell the story to Matthew. Because it was not long before Matt had organised a similar solution to his own bully problems. If any of you are interested, you can ask Matt what you can do with a switchblade, an insane look you’ve spent days practicing and a couple of friends who are briefed to wrestle you to the ground so that you don’t have to use it. Then go ask Mum what it’s like to be the deputy principal of a school and have your own son sent to you for pulling a knife in class. I remember Dad was banned from giving that sort of advice again.

The stories and memories cut through the blackness and despair and let me remember him as he was. I remember his generosity, not in money or words, but with his time and his home. How he offered his home to my cousins, Steven, Margaret and David, so they could get an Australian school certificate and qualifications, and to other kids who needed time and space and words of encouragement, who spent days or weeks or months at our place and left stronger, happier and more confident thanks to his help and encouragement.

I remember his courage and sacrifice when, in the 80’s, our family was broke and struggling to pay debts, he refused to pull my siblings and I out of private schooling because he thought it was the best possible chance for us. I might question the soundness of his judgement these days, but never the sentiment that drove it.

And I remember his pride and his guts. And I tell you honestly that he was always his own man. He would never go cap in hand to anyone and he would call the game as he saw it, regardless of the opinions of others.

But most of all, I remember the great joy he took from life and the great love he had for people. I know only a handful of people in all the world who were loved by all who met them. Sadly, I’m not one of them. But Dad was. He brought light and happiness to all who met him.

I grieve and will grieve for Dad in the days to come. For a life cut short by disease and because he won’t get to see his grandkids, or Rebecca married, because he won’t be able to sit back and enjoy the fruits of his labour and all the gifts that my brothers and sisters and I would have gladly showered on him, as some small payment for all the love he gave us.

But I will not shed a tear for his life, because he lived it as he wanted and on his own terms. And I will not cry for his passing because it was quick and clean. And he died surrounded by family and held in love.

Ladies and gentlemen, my dad was the greatest person I will ever meet and I can’t describe the good fortune I feel to have been his son. If there is any courage, nobility, love or joy in me, it comes from him and Mum. In Joanna, Rebecca and Lucy, I see reflections of the great joy and love that was in him. In Geoff and Matt, I see the fineness of his spirit, the courage of his heart and his great strength of character. As we go on, I know a part of him yet survives.

I don’t know how to end, except to say I loved him and I miss him already and that I thank him for my life and the life he shared with me.