Diane’s voice embellishes her wonderful writing. I wish you all could have heard her last night.

Last nights service for my father in Matt’s words: “More than exhausting, it was draining.”

Eulogy: Malcolm Geeslin Miller
08/31/1914-02/02/2007

My father in law spoke to us in riddles, but there was a period in the 70s when he was pushed to change by his early retirement from Westinghouse and we were young adults trying to figure out what the heck we were doing.

Mack and Helen would drive out to Boston regularly where 3 or 4 of his children were residing at any point, and he would graciously participate in something we called non-optional group therapy, where we would get together to dissect our hang-ups and blame our elders. Mack acknowledged at that time some of the ways in which he had been not an easy father and joined in a hippie generation dialogue I imagine and hope he never forgot.

But in later life, Mack retreated from public introspection and again engaged mostly around mathematics, mechanics or finances. Mack didn’t exactly know what to say to his grandson Matthew, who didn’t speak any of those. There was one moment, though, when their thoughts connected.

Matt was 8 when he suddenly understood what a pulley could do for you. He wanted one very badly. Shortly, a large and shiny pulley arrived in the mail from Mack. Bolted to Matt’s bedroom ceiling it allowed him to hoist himself up into the air to perch and read for hours.

That’s one of my fond memories from Matthew’s childhood, which was so very different from his grandfather’s. For instance, my son’s Dad broke through that same ceiling a few years later to build him a loft with a skylight. Mack, on the other hand, built himself an unheated garage to provide sleeping space there in the cold prairie winters with some of his siblings. Prior to that, his parents, Archie and Jesse and their 7 children slept together in their 3 room rural Kansas house.

One of Mack’s younger sisters Betty Jean, who idolized him, told a story about Mack’s coming to her with a thread and needle when he cut his arm through to the bone with his knife during a hunting accident. He was about 16, she about 12, and he talked her through sewing him back together.

Mack’s children plan to drive his body home to Latham Kansas this week, to lay him between his grandfather Ackless who fought in the civil war, and his mother Jesse who died when Mack was too young a man. It was a hard life in Latham, but it was part of what made Mack who he was, brave, competent, frugal, an extraordinary improviser, always generous with his helping hand, full of integrity by which I mean speaking and living his values, a man of halting words but vigorous effective action who mowed his lawn and cleaned his gutters to the end.

Diane M Canning
02/05/2007