Hello all. Thank you from the bottom of my heart to everyone who came to our celebration of life for my dad, Steve Mueller, yesterday. A few people asked I post the eulogy I wrote and read at the service. Please find the full text below, and thank you again for your support during this unbelievably difficult time. Love, Juliet.......................
Thank you all so much for coming today.
This isn’t the most traditional memorial service or funeral, but my dad wasn’t the most traditional guy.
He loved this house– loved living back in the woods, loved how our long, curved driveway and the canopy of trees separated us from the street and him from the world. So much of his life, his work– at least for the time I knew him– was spent here. He poured himself into every inch of this space: a vapor formed of music and cigar smoke and sharpie fumes taking the shape of its container.
And when I was a kid, I used to love when he and my mom would throw parties down here. The adults in the garage, their voices and laughter and the sounds of their cans hissing open traveling up through the house, or across the yard as I watched from the neighbor’s. The warmth of celebration, and the soft vibration of the stereo: the kind you can feel in your ear when you reluctantly lay your head down to sleep, knowing the night will stretch on merrily without you. I wanted my dad to have that one last time, to feel his friends and family around him in the space he knew best.
There are people here who knew my dad longer than I did, or ever will. And people who saw sides of him that I never saw, for better or for worse. So today, I just want to talk about my dad as I knew him, and as I’ll remember him.
He was born, and spent the first years of his childhood in Switzerland, which is something I always found fascinating. He was proud of his heritage, and I always liked how we flew the bright red Swiss flag on the pole on our house. He came here when he was seven, and struggled to learn English in elementary school. But once he did, as we all well know, he became a master of language, of conversation. A talker and a listener.
Of the stories I know from his adolescence, many are tales of debauchery: stealing from record stores, skipping school, bonfires in the woods, kegs buried in the sand, rowboats set aflame. And although he maintained a wicked sense of humor and an adventurous spark, I’d like to think parts of him softened when he became a father.
It’s difficult to articulate the ways in which you know someone loves you. But with my dad, it always felt clear. Everything we did made him proud, and we have the evidence to prove it. He used to line the walls of the stairwell leading into his shop with our artwork, our school projects. Every report card, every certificate and award and record of our achievement has been kept, filed away in Signdesign envelopes. Dance recitals, hockey games, swim meets, lifeguard tournaments, he attended all that he could, even if he was 40 minutes late.
And when he was late (which I can’t entirely fault him for, because I am the same way) I always knew when he was coming, because I could hear the rumble of his truck from a half-mile away. The familiar sound of the Toyota pulling up to the dance studio or the YMCA was one of the ways my dad made his own music. And the truck itself became such a part of his identity, both for the people who knew him best and for strangers that just happened to see him driving around. To me, the world never looked better, the sky never bluer, than from the vantage point of the bed of the truck, laying on my back as he quickly turned the corners, a warm breeze whistling around the bars.
I’ll remember him that way– as the person who delighted in taking kids on joy rides around the neighborhood and told them to duck as we passed the police station. Who remembered all of my friend’s names, and continued to ask about them as we aged out of childhood. Who loved to make people laugh, do sleight of hand tricks and play characters with silly voices. I’ll remember him as someone who taught me how to swim with my head above the water so I could keep an eye on the person who needed saving. As someone who swept dead crickets into piles so the birds would fly into the garage and find a snack.
And aside from memories, I want to extend his life and legacy through actions. My dad was a singularly creative person, and although he felt the same hesitations and insecurities we all do when reflecting on our own capabilities, he never doubted his own potential, or the value of his gift. He was an exceptional artist, and an ambitious business person, and he managed for a long time to sustain a wonderful life for himself and his family through an artistic enterprise. He never stopped expressing himself through creation, and as self-deprecating as he could be he always took that part of himself seriously, honored it with an artist’s sense of conviction. And he always took pride in his family’s gifts as well– he loved that Jonas played guitar, that I wrote and danced, that my mom could have a vision for a space and transform it with paint and color and decor. I want to believe in myself more, I want all of us to cherish and nurture the more tender, expressive parts of ourselves on his lead. I want us to believe in the radical depth of our own spirits.
That’s a big ask. It’s difficult to look inward and celebrate what you find there. But there are other ways to honor my dad. Playing music too loudly in the car. Doodling on a piece of paper for an hour and a half just to clear your mind. Going to visit a friend knowing that you’ll sit and talk for a while. Seeing a live concert. Cracking open a can of coke, smoking a joint, eating a hot plate of spaghetti with red sauce, or a steak au poivre. Seeing the glassy surface of the bay at dawn and giving into the impulse to dip an oar in the water, take the boat out for a row. Finishing a project and calling over a friend, a child, a spouse , saying, “Come here, I want to show you something.”
Thank you.
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