His family, his children, siblings and his first wife got up to talk at his funeral. They described him as a drunk, someone who was lazy and didn’t accomplish much, he didn’t work enough, didn’t pay the bills, couldn’t love and deserved exactly what he got- erased from existence. They talked about how the only hope they had was that his children could do better then him.

I sat there wondering what kind of man he would have been if he had truly been given a chance. A chance to live without the drugs and alcohol he finally used to keep everyone away. If he had been able to go to school as a child, if he had been loved when he was young, if he could have known that, just a little, he had something to contribute to our world.

He couldn’t read and could only do basic math. In the 1980’s he was failed by the school system. His parents also, could only see what he couldn’t do and as a child was called worthless everyday. Refusing to go back to school after grade 6, He learned to build.

He was a dreamer, a philosopher and could talk for hours about a story he had heard and what it might mean to others, what it meant to him. When he was young and it was still OK to ask someone to read to you, he asked and loved the classic stories. Checking books out of the Library, just by their covers, he would find someone to read them, so he could hear the stories.

He had the eye of an artist and could find meaning in so many ordinary things. He could tell you how the trees grew and imagined how they felt when he had to cut them down. He couldn’t tell you how he did it, but he could figure angles and design complex buildings, as long as it was in wood. Wood talked to him. He could build a home, out of logs, from a pile of wood and a picture. Tell a story and he could build it, in wood.

He was also broken and spent his whole life feeling unloved and unwanted. He lived as if his live was only an accident, a mistake of nature and one that needed to be corrected.

To his children he was an occasional visitor, not always kind, usually confused. Most often they knew him as someone their mother cursed and accused of things. She often called him “ a sperm donor”.   He could barely look at his children without feeling that he was doing wrong, rubbing off on them somehow. He loved them though, from a distance, wishing he could get to know them. Afraid to contaminate them with his unworthiness, his inability to learn, his curse,and so he stayed away.

He stayed away from anyone he started to love and tried to drown all the bad about himself. He sought to bury the tenderness he felt for the world, the conversations he had with the trees and the animals. He tried to drown his dreams and his wish that he could learn to be good, that someone could love him back.

And when someone did, he couldn’t believe it. At his funeral it was heartbreaking to hear what the world thought of this man, this drunk, who they believed got what he deserved.

I wonder what the world would have been like, if he had been given a chance.