It’s just my sister and me now. My father died peacefully in his sleep on August 21, 2023. Below is the eulogy I delivered at his funeral service today.

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Writing Mama’s eulogy just six months ago was hard because my mother was part of my heart. To write those words was to admit she was no longer with us. I’m as much my Dad’s son as I was hers and this is tough for similar reasons—and also because you can’t do a man like Bobby Richard Huff justice in just a few hundred words. The poet Walt Whitman wrote of containing multitudes; if there was ever a man in my life who truly contained such multitudes, it was my Dad.

Bobby Richard Huff — Dad — was born in Franklin, Tennessee on June 25, 1936, just one day after his mother Mildred’s birthday. The Huffs — Granny Mildred, Grandpa Ben, Uncle Jackie, and Dad — lived in a tiny tenant farmer’s house on Caldwell Farm. Dad made it clear to me that he both hated and loved the place. In an autobiography he wrote for family, he described his favorite moments in that little house. It’s worth a quote, if only to admire the fact that Daddy had a bit of the poet in him:

“In the summer the heat was awful … The narrow windows were kept open but there was rarely enough breeze to move the curtains. The only relief came during those rare summer storms. The first hope came with the sound of distant thunder. If we were lucky enough to be in its path, the curtains would begin to move. We listened for those first loud drops on that hot metal roof. It would break suddenly with bright flashes of lightning and the roar of rain and thunder. Water poured from the roof and we kept tubs and buckets where we could catch it. The drops would splatter on the screens and send a fine spray over the linoleum floor. The rush of wind would cool that small house before the prop was taken out and the window dropped. That night sleeping would be good.”

Some of my favorite memories are of how my Dad related to his mother. Granny Huff was chatty, smart, sensitive, and sweet, and I think Dad was one of her favorite people to talk to. They had loud, rapid-fire conversations about everything, and they often consisted of Granny declaring an opinion or asking a question and Dad teasing her relentlessly but somehow gently for an hour. And Granny enjoyed every moment.

From them, I learned to love words and conversation and the times when our house was full of people making all manner of noise. When we gathered like that the house was full of joy. That was why when several people came to visit Dad in his final days in hospice, I didn’t ask anyone to speak softly. The conversation flowed, overlapped, grew loud. I believe Dad could hear us, and I believe he loved it. I only wished he could come back to his place as the biggest, most entertaining voice in the room.

Daddy graduated from Antioch High School, the Salutatorian of the class of 1954. However, just as my mother’s class of ’56 yearbook revealed her as “H for most Honest” in the senior alphabet, Dad was — to no one’s surprise — elected most talkative.

He married Margaret Lovene Lane on Dec. 1, 1956. My sister Sherry was born a year later, brother David the following year. Rhonda came later in July 1960, and then after a seven year break, Mama finally had a big-headed carrot top like her husband. That was me.

Daddy had joined the Air National Guard in 1954. He stayed in the service for 41 years, retiring as Chief Master Sergeant — the top noncommissioned officer in his unit — in 1995. Walking through a New York airport for a layover on my flight from Massachusetts to Nashville, the late day light through the windows reminded me of being a boy and running through the grass to meet Dad when he came home from maneuvers each summer. He was often sunburnt and tired, but he’d let loose that big tenor laugh and give me some small souvenir from wherever he’d been. Macadamia nuts and an idol carved from Hawaiian lava rock. Ash from Mt. St. Helens in a jar. Photos of the ocean crashing against Italian coastline, of narrow cobblestone streets in Germany, of haze wrapping the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

Daddy went just about everywhere in the Air Guard and as a civilian. In order of fluency, he spoke Spanish, German, Italian, and some French. And he never stopped exploring languages — in his big upstairs office at the house in Smyrna I had to stop three different CDs he’d left on pause in various players. One was a woman singing German songs, another was a lecture on Roman history, and the third was conversational Spanish phrases. That gives you some idea of how my father’s mind worked.

When I was a kid, Dad would make his time in the Air National Guard sound boring. Once he turned 80 he began telling stories and I learned it was anything but. From secret missions to Central America to riding horses in the Southwest desert to drinking wine in the Azores, Dad found joy in exploring, in learning, in observing. My father had a wild, adventurous side and it didn’t go away after he left the military. He and Mom moved to beautiful Lake Chapala in Mexico for a while, and I think that was as happy as he’d been in years. They moved back to the states after my brother passed, but Dad remained restless till the end — because a mind like Bob Huff’s was never content with sitting still, and that was one of the many things I loved about him. We were very alike that way.

Sorting through memories to share with you has been an impossible task. Some are too much about me, not enough about Dad. Others are too complicated to communicate with ease. I did think of one that seemed right because it revealed a side to my father he didn’t let many people see.

Dad and I went on a fishing trip with his friend James and James’s son Kelly when I was 15. I was put out, thinking I was too old — Kelly was younger than me, still a little kid — and also, hey, I was a teenager, you know how they can be. But Dad and James immediately surprised me by going to a store near the lake and buying nothing but junk food. We stayed in a cabin, and seeing how relaxed my father was with his friend, how at ease, making silly jokes, poking fun at James and James giving good as he got — it all made me realize for the first time that once he’d been a kid like me. Dad and his friend only got annoyed with us, their sons, one time — when we both caught fish and they didn’t catch a thing.

The best moment of the trip, though, was when we took the boat out at night to see if we could get any bites. It was a full moon and with his sharp eyes Dad navigated easily. We anchored in a cove surrounded by high, tree-lined cliffs, and dropped our lines in the water. After a while, I noticed that Dad had fallen silent. Then I did too, as did James and Kelly. And we sat there quietly in the cool summer night, just watching fireflies flicker in the trees above and listening to the water hush itself against the limestone walls around us. At some point, I realized that my loud, loquacious father was simply letting himself enjoy the silence. It was like that perfectly still moment that sometimes falls after a congregation has prayed aloud in church. In that instance I knew I’d never fully understood the depths of my father’s personality, just what a truly complex, brilliant, wonderful man he was.

Dad’s command of words was formidable, but he knew that living, like music, is made of silence as well as sound. He knew that sometimes you just let go of words and listened to the world breathe around you.

At this point I already feel like Dad would say I’ve gone on too long. After all, after my fourth child Dylan was born in 2003, Dad greeted me on the phone with a hearty, “Congratulations! You can stop now.”

Mom and Dad lost two of their four children. My brother David died in 2000, and my eldest sister Sherry died in 2016. I was worried both deaths would break them, but I should’ve given my parents more credit. And Dad surprised me again after Sherry passed. It was storming when she died. Just after the storm moved on, Dad said he stepped outside and for the first time in his life, saw the actual end, the termination point of a rainbow. In telling the story I always heard a little wonder in his voice.

A few days later, my family’s dear friends Silvia and Nacho brought Dad a cedar sapling. They showed him where they’d found it, and it was the exact place where he’d seen the rainbow end. So they planted the tree in one corner of the back yard as a memorial to my sister. Even though in life my father could very much seem like a practical, no-nonsense military man, he held strong spiritual beliefs and never stopped studying mythology, history, philosophy, and scriptures from various religions. Even after Bob Huff had trouble walking without assistance, he was ready for an adventure, if only in his kaleidoscopic mind.

I’ve read that seeing deer after the death of a loved one could be a sign “that our loved ones remain connected to us in spirit, even though they are no longer physically present.”

My father died at 2 am on the 21st. I stayed with him for a while, told him I loved him, that I would take care of my sister. Then I drove back to his house in Smyrna.

As I passed Stonecrest TriStar Medical Center, where my sister died and where Dad first went when he got sick the final time, I saw motion out of the corner of my eye. I glanced to the right and saw a young stag running through the grass beside the road. Mindful of the danger of hitting a deer — to the deer and to me — I slowed to about 10 mph. Sure enough, it bounded into the road, flashing through my headlights for a moment, then it leaped into the field on the other side. It was 3 in the morning, and I simply stopped the car on the empty road and watched it race away into the dark.

For a moment I felt real wonder cut through the lead-like grief sitting heavy on my heart.

The truth is that it was the coolest part of the day and the young male was taking advantage of it to seek out food and water. Yet I couldn’t help but feel it was also a message.

My father is gone, but his wild, wandering spirit will always be out there somewhere, looking for another adventure. Looking for more wonderful, colorful stories to tell.