(Backpacking trip, Phoebe and Tommy, Scotland, UK)
People came from near and far to attend Tommy’s funeral, filling the venue to capacity with those who knew and loved him. I’ll never forget the moment his sister, Phoebe, stood up in front of everyone and delivered the stunning eulogy she had written to honour her brother. They had been close all their lives, always there for each other under any circumstance, unconditional love at its finest. Enjoy what Phoebe has shared in her writing, a wonderful read that so beautifully depicts her brother’s life here in the physical.
Tommy’s Eulogy – Written and Delivered by Phoebe 1st June, 2019
Tommy wasn’t someone who embellished… his feet were firmly planted in the realities of life. His character, however, often seemed out of this world. His kindness knew no bounds, his humor no limits, his generosity no end. No one could have wanted a better friend, no parent a better son, and no sister a better little brother.
When you first met Tom, he’d come across as a quiet guy. He was content to keep to himself, conscious of his own presence with a keen awareness of others, and occasionally appearing shrouded in a certain level of mystery; his sparkling eyes hinting at his brilliant mind and his many gifts that left you wondering, “What was going on inside that big head of his?” And when I say big head, I do mean a physically large, rock-hard head. As a six-year-old, Tom had to wear adult-sized bike helmets.
You knew something was going on in there because when he looked at you, it was as though he could see right through you – through any façade or pretense you might put up in front of the world. He could see straight to the core of you, but with a gentleness and understanding that instantly accepted you for who you truly were, because he was never one to judge. I reckon this is why he was such a great listener, when he wanted to be. He had broad shoulders like our Grandad’s, built to offer support and to gladly carry the concerns of others.
His bright, compassionate, imaginative nature was apparent from the early days. He was easily enchanted and loved being swept away by stories, both those told to him and those created by the magic of his own mind. After watching Toy Story for the first time at age four, he began a new nightly ritual of systematically going through all his toys before he went to sleep, turning any toy with a face away from his bed – he didn’t want them watching him while he slept.
His kind and caring, some would say chivalrous, attitude wasn’t learned, it was instinct. At just three years old, he gave up his front row seat to a magic show at a birthday party for the birthday girl. He quietly traded places with her to make sure she had a good view. Earlier still, during one of the many rounds of vaccinations we get as kids, Tom bravely bore the pain of the needle quietly, unlike the kids who came before him. When all was said and done, with bright red ears and glistening eyes, he turned to his doctor and quietly said, “Thank you,” for his vaccinations.
My mum has told me tons of stories like these about tiny Tom, stories that, when told, can’t help but make you smile. These stories are a perfect reflection of who he was, because to be around him was to find yourself smiling, with no true reason to point to. Just who he was.
Growing up, our childhood was far from average. We crossed the Atlantic twice, living in five different counties and seven different houses by the time Tom was eight. His first passport photo was taken at just two weeks old, propped up precariously against our mum’s chest. He took his first flight at only six weeks old and was an absolute charm, sleeping the whole way through. This was the first sign of one of Tom’s more peculiar personality traits – his knack for napping anywhere, anytime. Floors were a recurring favorite, as were staircases and chairs, both at home and in restaurants, airports, and malls. He even managed to fall asleep on the cat’s climbing tree, not once but twice!
Anyway, every few years brought a new sea of faces, a new set of city streets, new school halls, and new friends. Our one constant was each other and our close-knit family of four, which Tom and I cherished from an early age. Maybe that’s why it sometimes took Tom a little time to warm up to new friends.
Tom was the kind of man who truly saw everyone for what we are – people deserving of respect, kindness, and each other’s courtesy and time. When we lived in Italy, he befriended a waiter at one of our favorite restaurants, forming a genuine friendship. It was so strong that years after we had moved to Florida, when we returned to Opicina, the same man recognized him immediately and remembered his favorite dish, the rack of lamb. We know he remembered because he didn’t even give Tom a chance to order. He had the dish brought out to the table before we’d finished reading the menu.
Here in Florida, he had a few downs, but mostly his life was full of ups. As a middle schooler, around 11 years old, he was a starting midfielder for the high school varsity football team. You’d see these tall 17 and 18 year-old young men in the lineup on the side of the field, and then there was Tom – this lanky, skinny, short little odd duck looking fellow. Or so he seemed, until he stepped onto the field. He held his own and earned his place in the lineup because he was a naturally gifted footballer.
After his side played a team for the first time, opposing coaches quickly learned their lesson. Before future games, they would warn their players to keep an eye out for the little kid in the middle. After suffering a few injuries, he hung up his boots and turned to a new and up-and-coming indoor sport – gaming, which he also more than excelled at. When he was just 15 years old, he started earning his own pocket money by sharing videos of his trick-shot skills on his YouTube page. His channel amassed a following of, I believe, around 250,000 subscribers in just under a year. That same year, he was recruited to play for an international semi-professional team in one of the first gaming leagues in the world.
Anyone who knows Tommy can tell you he loved sports – all sports. He was practically a savant, a walking sports encyclopedia. Not just American sports, but if you wanted to know who would be driving for Mercedes-Benz in the next Formula One race, he’d be able to tell you. Not up to date on the latest soccer transfer rumors for Juventus or PSG, or even who the best emerging players were in Ajax or the lower leagues of France and Italy? Tom was. As for Manchester United, he certainly knew who they should buy and how the team he loved should play.
Cricket held a special place in Tom’s heart, a love passed down to him from our father. Dad got Tom his very first cricket bat when he was around 10 years old. In cricket, one of the batsman’s goals is to guard three stumps, which are essentially three short sticks in the ground. For an authentic experience, Tom took a marker to the wall between our garage doors and drew his very own stumps. They are still there today, despite our best efforts to paint over them through the years. In the last few years, he had become an avid fan of the Indian Premier League. This year, he was especially looking forward to the World Cup, having watched two of the teams play live just a few months earlier in the Caribbean.
In recent years, he had also rediscovered a love of golf, so much so that our parents bought him a golfing net for Christmas so he could practice his swing at home. For Tom, when he liked something, he was all in. For the last five months, the soundtrack to life at our home was the thwack of Tom whacking balls into the net on the back patio morning, afternoon, and night – even after coming home from work at 2 a.m.
I mentioned earlier the brilliance of Tom’s mind. He wasn’t particularly a gifted gabber with a stranger or a new acquaintance, but once you got to know him and he began to open up, his ever-running trains of thought would unobtrusively and unexpectedly pour out of his mouth in the most unassuming and unannounced manner.
Tom and I used to spend many of our nights sitting on our back patio, chatting about all sorts of topics – everything from “What if the T-Rex had regular, proportionate arms instead of those tiny stubby things?” to “Why are we here? Is there a God? What is our purpose?” He was a natural philosopher, a star gazer, a thinker. A debate we frequently returned to was the great life path debate. At the time, Tom was still unsure of what his future held and where it would lead him.
His moral compass was largely unchanged, as its true north was always pointed in the direction of good, but his priorities were still something he was figuring out – what was most important to him? I’ll never forget the night he came home from work, exhaustion etched across his face, but with an excited twinkle in his eye. He plopped himself down in the seat across from me and gave me his “I’ve figured out something you haven’t” grin before announcing that he had chosen to prioritize happiness. That choice dictated most of his decision-making because he was determined to consciously live the best life he could. A life that helped to raise society as a whole, one that would improve everyone’s lives. To him, that could only be achieved by finding one’s own true happiness.
A lot of things made Tom happy – most things, really. He was a genuinely happy guy. One of his biggest joys was travel. We were blessed with adventurous parents, so traveling and exploring became our family’s way of spending uninterrupted time together. Growing up, we saw much of Europe and England. A favorite trip of Tom’s was when we hiked through both the mountains and the rainforest of Peru. We took a boat through the Amazon, and local guides trekked us through the forests along the river shores.
While we mostly hung back, Tom was always right up at the front, soaking in all the information the guides shared with us. On one trek, we learned about the benefits of using a common species of ant as a facial rub. We were told it worked wonders for your skin and acted as a natural insect repellent. That was all Tom needed to hear – he scooped up a handful from the nearest tree, crushed them in his palm, and rubbed them all over his face right then and there. He was a true “Yes man” at times.
When Tom was 18, he embarked on a solo backpacking trip through Italy, stopping both before and after at our uncle’s house in Switzerland. He stayed in hostels and explored the winding old city streets of places like Siena, Rome, and Pompeii. That trip wasn’t all roses and rainbows – it had its fair share of bumps and bruises, not just for him but for us at home as well.
He gave our poor mum a near panic attack one day when he messaged her, requesting that she call him immediately, saying it was urgent and an emergency. Mum dropped what she was doing to call him, only to see him standing in a grocery store, pointing the camera at some soap bottles, and asking, “Can I use this to wash my hair?”
A year or so later, Tom and I set off on a month-long expedition through the UK, working our way from the southern town of Winchester up to the northern Scottish city of Inverness. That last stop was Tom’s favorite on the trip; he loved the old Scottish town. It was the only place where he decided to pick up a souvenir. Some of you will have seen him wearing it around – his Scottish flat cap
With his friends, he explored much of Florida, from Orlando to Miami and everywhere in between. They even road-tripped to New Orleans last October for a music festival. He visited New York with my dad and me and Dad’s family, and he went to Barbados with Dad to watch England play the West Indies ahead of this year’s Cricket World Cup.
His spontaneous nature often spurred these impromptu expeditions, and his happy-go-lucky attitude meant most of them were largely unplanned. After a certain amount of time would pass, maybe a year, maybe a month, and his feet would begin to itch again, and he’d be off on his next journey.
Our adventurous lifestyle as kids meant we became accustomed to the idea that friends came and went. We both learned, but especially Tom, to cherish the moments we had with each of them. It also meant that Tom built very strong bonds with his family, with me and with our mum and dad especially. These bonds grew stronger over the course of his life because he carefully tended to them, nurturing them with patience and an attentive, effortless love. This came to him naturally, I believe, because Tom’s greatest pleasure was bringing happiness to others. He made sure our mum started every day with a big bear hug to remind her of how incredibly special she is and would spend spare moments challenging her to her favorite board games. He spent weekend mornings and afternoons on the couch with my dad, watching football, golf, or, more recently, cricket. Or out with him, playing the same sports they enjoyed watching so much.
He kept both of them on their toes too, eventually beating them at their own games. The Friday before he passed, he beat my dad in another competitive game of golf, not for the first time either. In the last three rounds of Scrabble he played against my mum, he won every one.
Tommy’s thoughtfulness shone most clearly around Christmas and birthdays, when he would spare no expense to surprise all of us with carefully selected, personalized presents or plans. Just this past Mother’s Day, he arranged a boat rental on the Intracoastal so that the four of us could spend the day together.
These accomplishments might raise a few eyebrows here today, which wouldn’t surprise me in the least. Tom was not one to brag, even when the praise was more than deserved. His humility and his fervent desire to never impose his own experiences or opinions on others meant you could talk to him about your love of jigsaw puzzles, and he’d never mention our family’s Christmas jigsaw tradition. Nor would he tell the story of our race to finish those jigsaws on Christmas Eve most years. He was happy to listen and to share in the experiences of others and, more often than not, preferred that to sharing experiences of his own.
Tom will be remembered for many things, some of which I’ve touched on already, but I think we can all agree that his laugh and his sense of humor are among the top traits we will miss the most. His humor was sometimes a little dark at times, a little dry, but it was a key part of both his personality and his approach to life. For Tom, laughter was integral to living a full life.
At work, he’d organize paper airplane contests with his coworkers during downtime, and he was a great sport when he became the butt of the odd joke – like laughing when friends snuck ice into his pocket. One night, during one of our lively, nearly nightly talks, we got onto the topic of his humor, and he told me how he sometimes felt his style could be a bit quirky. He said, “You’ve got to learn to laugh, to laugh at the little things, because if you can’t do that, how are you supposed to handle the big stuff?”
He didn’t say it quite like that, of course, I’m paraphrasing a bit here. Tom’s way with words was as unique as his laugh, which I always teased him about. I think that is what I may miss the most… listening to him talk, to him talking about his hopes, and hearing his laugh.
That was my job, as any older sibling can tell you – to listen to him, to love and encourage him, to offer counsel when asked, but mostly to just be an open ear, a wall to lean on. To do that for Tom was not at all a chore; it was an absolute blessing. I don’t think there are words to explain how grateful I am to have had the relationship I did with him, to have had the opportunity to support him as he supported everyone else.
He was growing, learning, loving, laughing, and truly living in a way that most people never will. He consciously and actively worked to do so. Many people are driven by a passion, and that passion is typically poured into a hobby or a job. Tom’s passion was for life itself, for living life as authentically as he could, without fear, without regret, and without imposing his beliefs or lifestyle choices on the rest of the world.
Today, somehow, someway, we all have to figure out how to say goodbye to the boy who held my hand as we wobbled over rocks and climbed mountains, who hugged my mum harder than anyone else ever could, who was my dad’s best friend and made him the proudest man in the world. To a little boy full of light, who grew into a man full of nothing but love.
I wish I could tell you how to do that, just as I wish I could’ve answered even a tenth of the questions Tom peppered me with over the years, but I can’t. What I can say is that this isn’t truly a goodbye because I firmly believe our Tommy isn’t truly gone. He lives on, in moments and memories… in his friends’ recollections of long nights at work, my father’s memories of going to see the game, my mother’s memories of being bested at Scrabble, and in my memories of telling him bedtime stories when he’d had a nightmare and couldn’t fall back to sleep.
He lives on inside all of us, in all of our hearts, which means we all now carry the duty of living a life worthy of the love he gave us. In my opinion, that’s a life that looks a bit like Tommy’s – a life lived authentically, compassionately, spontaneously, and lovingly. For Tom.