Christina’s speech about her father, delivered at both the Lewiston and Old Town memorials:

Thank you all for being here and thank you to everyone who has shared kind words about my father. I know what he has meant to me and to my family, but it has been so moving, comforting, and inspiring to hear what he has meant to others as well.

Being prepared as he was for this inevitability, my dad had picked out two pieces that he wanted read at his funeral. My brother Nick will do the honor of reading those.

The first is a poem titled “Invictus” by William Ernest Henley:

Out of the night that covers me,

      Black as the pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

      For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

      I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

      My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

      Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

      Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,

      How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate,

      I am the captain of my soul.

As cliche as it may sound, as my family and I spent the last week of my dad’s life by his bedside grappling with the fact of saying goodbye, a quote by A.A. Milne kept coming to mind: “How lucky am I to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.” As we had our final moments, in the midst of our wild grief I felt gratitude. I had nearly four decades of being loved and cheered on by a great man who never hesitated to tell any of us that he loved us or that he was proud of us. And I know that he knew it was reciprocated; he wrote in 2020 of the love he felt for us and the love he felt in return. 

Growing up, I was always aware that my dad had a tough job – he had to make hard decisions based on what he believed was right, he had high expectations, and he had to hold other people accountable. Me being a born people-pleaser, I always wanted to tell people who might have thought he was just a hard-ass that they had it wrong. I wanted them to see not just Principal Gus LeBlanc, but my dad, the guy he was to us, at home.

How he once tried to braid my hair when my mom was away at a conference, but his fingers were too stubby and chubby and the braid fell out over and over. How he stayed up all night on Christmas Eve putting together my Barbie dream house or my brother’s Ninja Turtles sewer. How he always dressed up in costume for the Gaetani family Fourth of July parade, whether it be as Batman (the face mask didn’t fit over his big nose) or as Smokey the Bear, or dozens of other goofy things. How he took me to see my favorite boy band, O-Town, and took me backstage to meet the band. (His favorite was Dan.) How, during the pandemic, we got really into the board game Ticket to Ride (or “Trains,” as my dad called it) and he and Aaron developed quite a rivalry. How he was constantly losing his glasses while they were on the top of his head but he could remember the entire starting lineup of the Boston Red Sox from the very first game he went to at Fenway with his parents as a boy. How, even though to the outside he might seem like a stubborn old ox, he helped make our house a place where all of our friends were safe and comfortable being themselves, and he treated them with kindness and respect. How he had a special relationship with dogs and especially with Nick’s dog, Ella, who he claimed could communicate with him telepathically. How, on the beach in Florida, he would tell people his huge gallbladder surgery scar was actually from a shark bite, and how he rode Space Mountain and Tower of Terror with us at Disney World even though he was more scared than we were. 

How he took a pay and position cut so that his job would allow him more time to spend with his family and more time to coach mine and Nick’s rec league teams. How we always hosted Little League barbecues in the backyard, accompanied by his iconic hot dog steamer. How he was determined to do right by our father-daughter dance at my wedding, and so he paid for dance lessons for me and Aaron and he and my mom. (It was so fun.) How he and I watched Armageddon together and sobbed at the end when Liv Tyler has to say goodbye to her father, played by Bruce Willis, who is sacrificing his life in order to save countless others. How he would stop and watch Titanic every single time it was on TV, or quote The Town constantly – “whose car we gonna take?” How he was actually a pretty romantic guy, and recently had been playing the song “I’ve Been Waiting For a Girl Like You” to my mother each night before bed.

Now, I’m not here to tell you my father was perfect. I have been woken up by a friend at a slumber party who heard him snoring and thought there was a bear in our house. He wasn’t a great driver but god forbid you try to tell him that. Despite the capabilities of modern technology, he still routinely addressed and signed his text messages and said his name, the date, and the time any time he left a voicemail. He once accidentally dropped an entire pile of clothes that my mother had painstakingly picked out and tried on into the pond at L.L. Bean. But, these minor flaws aside… he was a pretty excellent guy.

They say there are different love languages, ways that we make others feel loved without just saying “I love you”: words of affirmation, physical touch, gift-giving, quality time, and acts of service. Words of affirmation were a given with my dad. Though I’m probably a teacher at heart because of my mother, I’m probably a teacher in practice because of my father. When I was adrift and not sure what to do, he encouraged me to get my teaching certification and helped me make it happen. In my desk at school I keep a printout of an email he sent me on a random Friday in January about three years ago. It read, in part:

Hi Christina:

It was nice to see you today.  After you left I decided to stretch out on the coach for a while and I began thinking about you and how very proud I am of you.  You are clearly an outstanding teacher.  You have a great work ethic and you believe in doing quality work.  I am happy for you and Aaron as you plan out your future together.  It pleases me to see you happy. Most of all I guess I am so very pleased with the person you have become.  You are a good person, compassionate, empathetic, intelligent, and caring.  How could I ask for anything more in a daughter.  You are great!  Thanks for all you do for mom and I.  I enjoy spending time with you, seeing you laugh and smile and I am amazed at your talent and creativity.

I love you,

Dad

I don’t include that here to toot my own horn, but to show you the kind of positive communication I regularly received from my father. This was not a birthday or a holiday, but just a night I’d stopped by to hang out with my parents after work. I know my brother has similar experiences of my father telling him he’s proud of him, just when he needed it most. When he bought cards for my mom for holidays, he always searched to find one with just the right sentiment. This year he signed her Valentine’s Day card with “Love you more!” My parents were very cute together. I grew up seeing them cuddle on the couch or hold hands when they went shopping. My dad thought the world of my mom and made sure my brother and I knew that. When asked in a 2020 writing prompt, “What advice would you give your 20 year old self?” he wrote, “Make sure you marry Patti Gaetani.” In response to another prompt, he wrote that my mom was “the most important and significant friend in [his] life,” who “has been [his] confidant, his cheerleader, his partner in adventure, and the one person who [he has] trusted the most.” He concluded with, “I have been very lucky.” My dad had another poem he wanted read here today, in his words, “as a personal sentiment to the love of my life, Patti Gaetani LeBlanc.” It is called “When Tomorrow Starts Without Me,” originally by David M. Romano and abridged by Gus LeBlanc:

When tomorrow starts without me

And I am not here to see

If the sun should rise and find your eyes 

All filled with tears for me

I wish you would not cry

The way you did today

While thinking of the many things

We did not get to day

I know how much you love me

As much as I love you

Each time that you think of me

I know you will miss me too

When tomorrow starts without me

Do not think we are apart

For every time you think of me

Remember I am right here in your heart

Quality time was extremely important to my dad. He loved when we gathered at the house for dinner on Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, birthdays, Mothers Day and Fathers Day, or any other time we’d barbecue or hang out and play games. In 2020 he wrote, “My life is and has been about relationships. My family is the most important relationship of all. Patti, Christina, Nicholas, and now Aaron and Ella make every day worth living. I enjoy spending time with them even in the simplest of ways. Time is not infinite and to use what time we have with the people we love is one of the best uses of it.”

In addition to giving us his time, my dad was big on acts of service. He used to get up and go downstairs before my mom left for work every morning and open the garage door, bring her bags to the car, and get the car started and warmed up for her. He’s driven many a U-Haul helping Nick move from place to place, and when Aaron and I bought our house, my dad helped us move, helped with our yard, made little fixes for us, even came out in chilling temperatures and worked with me for hours to help unfreeze our pipes during the 2022 cold snap. 

He loved picking up Nick’s pup Ella from doggy daycare and taking her on long walks, during which she could sniff everything she wanted to. He was always willing to help any of us, even when he was busy with other things.

When my dad went into cardiac arrest, he was driving to my house to help me and my husband with something. He was driving his truck, which wasn’t the norm, but my brother was planning to borrow it that weekend so he was making sure it was running smoothly. These final acts of service gave us one last gift – an extra week with him. Because he was in the truck, and because he was in my quiet neighborhood where there’s no traffic, he made it through the car accident. We had a week to sit with him, hold his hand, tell him we love him, and come to terms with what was happening. 

We weren’t ready then, we aren’t ready now, and we will never be ready to say goodbye to him. But I want to share something that gave me tremendous comfort during the last week of his life and I hope it will give some of you comfort as well.

In October, a couple of days after the horrific mass shooting in Lewiston, my dad needed to leave the house to get some groceries for he and my mom; he was going to drive to a store in a different town. He’d called me to see if Aaron and I needed anything, and I asked him if he felt safe going out. He told me, “you know, I hope it’s not my time but I am not going to live in fear. If it is my time, I am at peace with my life. I’ve enjoyed my career and I’ve been married to the love of my life for 48 years. I’ve gotten to see you and Nick grow up into great people that I’m really proud of. And I’ve gotten to spend time with Ella, and Aaron, and I’m happy to see you with Aaron; he’s a good man. So if my life ends, I’m happy with what I’ve done and who I’ve spent it with.” At the time I was like, “Dad!” but now I realize what a wonderful thing he did for me by telling me that. It might be the only reason I’m not currently curled up on the floor somewhere in the fetal position. Because I knew that he was happy and at peace with his life, I am able to be at peace with his death, no matter how much I am not ready for him to be gone. May we all live our lives so that when they come to an end, we are happy and at peace.

In our house, my dad openly discussed his own mortality to the point that we jokingly called him “Morbid Murphy.” And what stands out to me now is how his own acceptance of his mortality is in such stark contrast to how others see him; in the past few weeks I’ve heard him referred to as both immortal and invincible more than once. And on that note, I want to give a heartfelt thanks on behalf of myself and my family to every person who has shared a story about my dad with us through notes, cards, calls, texts, social media, or in conversation. Many of these stories we had never heard before and may never have heard otherwise. They all mean so much to us and they help keep my invincible dad immortal for a little bit longer. 

Thank you all for being here and for all of your support.