"My name is George Keenen. I’m George’s son. We are here because we knew George and admired the way he lived his life. George was a Man of Faith. He was open, funny--courtly, as someone said tonight--extremely generous and happy. He was a big man, big as a tree is big, not rigid against the wind, but giving shelter and nourishment to many creatures; big as a wide river is big—not turbulent, but strong, and deep.

I must say that his death was as amazing and inspiring as his life. With the help of family and hospice, he slipped quietly into the light. It seemed to me a great gift, the fitting fulfillment of his life as a Catholic man. My dad loved the church. And he knew his place in it: he was a layman, with a capital L. He started a public Forum of Catholic speakers when I was young; it went on for years. And through our house paraded all types of people whose life was also to serve the church—priests, prelates, thinkers, holy people, educators, writers, missionaries. What an education that was.

I sat in his study last night and looked at his books, his awards and plaques given for service, his photographs. There’s one of him at a podium, speaking at a communion breakfast years ago. Arrayed on either side of him were men of the cloth, priests and bishops, and they were all leaning back, looking up at him in rapt attention. He was only a layman; he had been a seminarian until he met my mother, so he wore a suit most of his life, not a cassock. But, of all the people we met through the forum, George was more what I would call a prince of the church than any of them.

Thank you for everything, dad.

May we all aspire to live as deeply and to die as well."

Go 
from me

 Yet I feel that I shall stand

 henceforward in thy 
shadow

 nevermore alone upon the threshold

 of my door of 
individual life

 shall I command the uses of my soul,

 nor 
lift thy hand serenely as before

 without the sense of that which I 
forebore

.... thy touch upon my palm. 

The widest land doom 
takes to part us

 leaves thy hand in mine with pulses that beat double

 
and when I see God for myself 

He sees within my eyes the tears of two.