Three years ago, my dad—Timothy Louis Gallagher—passed away in the hospital in Madisonville, Kentucky. This is the eulogy I delivered at his funeral a few days later (April 28, 2023). Dad was 71 years old.

My dad died this past Monday, April 24. The church sent out the news of his death a little before 2pm. That was the second death announcement the church sent out that day. The first death announcement, sent out 15 minutes earlier, reported that I was the one that had died—which gives me the chance to say that the reports of my death are greatly exaggerated. Some of you are wondering why I would be telling jokes at a time like this. Others of you are probably thinking, well, that wasn’t much of a joke. But the reason I’m starting my dad’s eulogy with something close to a joke is because I am the son of Tim Gallagher, and if he were giving this speech, he would definitely start with a joke.

That’s something he sometimes did: give speeches. Actually, I haven’t heard him give a speech in a long time, maybe decades. I do remember him giving a speech at the rehearsal dinner the evening before my wedding, so that was 23 years ago. I’m not sure I’ve heard him give a speech since then, but when I was young, I remember him doing it a lot. He was in a group called Toastmasters, and they would get together and give speeches, and critique each other. At least, I think that’s what would happen at their meetings. I never actually went to one. But he wanted to become a good public speaker, he wanted that challenge, and he achieved that. One time he came to my school—I can’t remember if it was West Broadway Elementary or Browning Springs Middle School, but it must have been a DARE program because he came to talk about drugs. He had the kids eating out of his hand.

There are so many things I want to tell you about my dad. I’m not a funeral guy; I don’t get asked to do many funerals. I’ve done a handful over the years, but this is the first funeral I’ve done for someone that I lived with, and I lived with him for 18 years. I’ve got a lot to say about him. And I want to get this right. It’s hard to capture his life in this little speech, this eulogy. I recognize that this is one of the defining moments of my life, that decades from now I will tell people about Tim Gallagher and say that I spoke at his funeral. I will tell them how I spent most of the last week of his life sitting in his hospital room, along with my mom and my sister Elaine and other family members. I will explain how I walked into his hospital room just in time to hear his sister-in-law Anna Lou exclaim, “He’s got his eyes open,” while Elaine said, “I think this is it.” I want people to know that he was the type of father who deserved to have his children gathered around him in his last moments, the type of man whose wife wanted to—and did—spend the last night of his life next to his hospital bed, the type of man who deserves a fitting eulogy. So, yes, I want to get this right.

There are a lot of angles by which to approach my dad’s life, a lot of things to say about the type of person he was, and I know each one of you had your own experiences with him, your own angles of vision on his character.

A lot of you know him as a pharmacist. My dad practiced pharmacy in Madisonville since 1975, just after he graduated from Ole Miss, where he met my mom. He followed her back to her hometown, which became his adopted hometown and his children’s hometown. (Dad was a grew up in Texarkana, Texas.) My parents owned Robards Drug Store throughout most of the 1980s and 1990s, and in that capacity my dad gave some of you jobs. He gave Elaine and me jobs. Elaine eventually figured out that she wanted to follow in my parents’ footsteps and become a pharmacist herself. I pretty soon figured out that I did not want to spend my life working in a pharmacy. Let me say that if my dad was disappointed in my decision not to follow his career path, he did not let on. After my parents sold Robards, they worked at various pharmacies, but Mom mostly worked at Rite Aid and Dad mostly worked at Walmart. He managed the local Walmart pharmacy for a while, and one year he was named the national pharmacy manager of the year for Walmart.

Dad loved being a pharmacist, and two aspects of his character stand out to me in relation to pharmacy. One, he enjoyed working hard. Especially when he owned Robards—well, you can imagine the long hours he kept when he owned his own business. When he bought Robards from Mr. Hatchell, the store was open from something like 8 in the morning until 10 at night. I remember as a little kid going to bed before Dad got off work. He worked hard, and he enjoyed it. Even our vacations were work: no sitting on the beach for us. We went on vacation to get things done, to explore new places and see new sights. The second thing I think about is how he enjoyed interacting with customers, providing help to them. Pharmacy gave him a way of helping people, of being generous. Those of you who were his customers know what I’m talking about. Mom and Dad have routinely given Jodi and me things; they’ve always been ready to help us in any way that they could. I don’t know how many things in our house are gifts from them. On the day he died, Mom gave me his shoes, these Sketchers that I’m wearing which he had bought because you could just slide your foot right into them. The shoes are a little smaller than I’m used to wearing; if I had bought them for myself, I would have gotten a bigger pair. I’m glad to wear them because they were my dad’s, but they’re a little small for me. On the other hand, in terms of his character, his hard work and his generosity, his shoes are much harder to fill.

I said he worked a lot and that often he would come home after I was in bed. But at some point he moved the closing hours up to 6pm so he could spend more time with his family. He was devoted to us, to Elaine and me. Much of my childhood was spent in our backyard with Elaine and Dad, and we were throwing a baseball or softball. It seems like all summer long we were practicing hitting or fielding. He was Elaine’s softball coach for several years. He was devoted to us. He loved us. He wanted to teach us and shape our character. He wasn’t the disciplinarian Mom was, but sometimes he would get in on it. I especially remember that Elaine could get under his skin. I’m talking about the young Elaine. Oh, who am I kidding, I’m talking about Elaine no matter what age. Have you met her? But I especially remember a threat Dad would use on the young Elaine, when we still lived on Arrowhead Drive, and Elaine had a phone line in her room. Elaine would do something defiant, and Dad would yell, “I’m going to rip that phone out of the wall!” He yelled it a lot, but he never actually ripped it out of the wall. I don’t bring that up to talk about my dad’s empty threats, but to show you that he wanted to protect his daughter. He was deeply concerned about us kids. And I know my own kids are thinking, “what does it mean to rip a phone out of a wall? Why was the phone in the wall?” Phones used to be attached to the wall by a cord. We’ll talk about it later.

I will also say that besides Elaine, I don’t remember Dad ever having any trouble out of his other children. Just sayin’.

What else should I tell you about my dad? He loved cooking. Not just cooking, but learning about cooking, about different techniques or different tools or different dishes to prepare. He loved experimenting in the kitchen. In the hours before his death, when we were just waiting on it to happen, Elaine said she didn’t know who she was going to call now for cooking advice. Dad loved reading, and he has encouraged that in his kids and grandkids. He’s bought all of us, I guess, kindles. He loved the Dallas Cowboys, from his home state. He loved UK Basketball from his adopted state. He loved Alabama Football, since he claimed an inheritance in Alabama through me and my family. We’ve lived in Alabama since 2006, and he used that as an excuse to root for—let’s admit it—a superior college football team.

Dad loved my mom. They were married nearly 49 years. They raised their family together, owned a business together, shared a career. They took trips together, vacations to Europe and across America that some of you joined them on. My parents were looking forward to their 70s, retirement life that would allow for more travel and visits with grandkids. Mom will still be able to do that, but without the man who devoted his life to her.

Dad also passed on his faith to his children. When I was growing up, when it came to church, we were a three-times-a-week family. Mom and Dad taught Elaine and me from an early age to be devoted to the life of the church. I also remember my dad offering critiques of the day’s sermon. As he aged, Dad grew less critical of sermons, more—I don’t know—receptive, I guess. Sean, a few weeks ago he told me I had to listen to your sermon because it was one of the best he had ever heard, a sermon on the structure of the Psalter. But Dad also showed me how to live out the teachings of Scripture; the apostle Paul says that “the one who loves another has fulfilled the law” (Rom 13:8). I’ve already talked about Dad’s generosity toward others. Those are big shoes to fill.

I’ve been thinking a lot, lately, about what it means to live a good life. As I was driving back and forth in recent days between Madisonville and Alabama, where I live, I listened to this great podcast, four episodes on the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Some of you may know that name. Bonhoeffer was executed by the Nazis in 1945, shortly before the end of WW II, because of his role in a conspiracy to rescue Jews from Germany and assassinate Adolf Hitler. The most amazing moment, I think, in Bonhoeffer’s life was his decision in 1939 to not take the easy way out. He was in New York City for a few weeks as a way of avoiding the suffering that would come with being in Germany, and he decided that he could not avoid suffering if he was going to do anything valuable in life. He returned to Germany to work against the Nazi regime from the inside, and he sacrificed his life in that effort. He was 39 years old when he died.

Bonhoeffer, I think, lived a good life, a valuable life, a life of sacrifice and love. It’s easy to honor his memory because he faced such a dreadful evil and he made a difficult and inspiring choice. Most of us do not face such fateful decisions. Such decisions do not come in every generation. The choice that Bonhoeffer made is not a choice that we ourselves have the option of making. So when there is no Nazi regime for us to oppose, when the ethical choices that we face are not so stark, when we don’t have the option of giving our lives in the cause of opposing an obvious and terrible evil, what does a good life look like? Bonhoeffer’s life was momentous because he was in a momentous situation, but what about the rest of us who are not in such a momentous situation?

We still have the choice, don’t we? We can still choose whether we will exhibit love and sacrifice in our lives. The preacher Fred Craddock once mentioned that a lot of us think that when God demands we give over to him our lives, what that means is that we write a $10,000 check to God all at once. “Here God, this is my life.” But what God usually wants from us is that $10,000 one dollar bill at a time. (I’ve inflated the numbers a bit.) We give over our lives to God in installments. Bonhoeffer gave his $10,000 check all at once. Most of us who don’t face such a choice are forced to give a dollar at a time.

Will we be generous with our time and our money, as our Lord calls on us to be? Will we forgive when we are wronged, as our Lord demands? Will we be full of grace, as God has showered us with grace? Will we treat others better than they treat us? Will we treat them the way we wish they would treat us? These small decisions are what it means to give your life over to God a dollar at a time. And as I think about what that looks like, I think about my dad. He’s left some big shoes to fill.

I’m going to miss a lot of things about my dad, about who he was, previous experiences that I had with him. But mostly what I’m going to miss going forward—the crater that his death creates for me now that I’m in my 40s—is that he won’t be there for my kids. On her Facebook page, my wife, Jodi, linked to my dad’s obituary and described him as my kids’ greatest encourager. Listen, my kids need discipline, they need to be tamed, and my dad wasn’t about to provide any of that. In his 50s and 60s, he was done being a parent, and he had transitioned fully into grandparent mode. When my kids did anything—whether cute or amazing or destructive or whatever—he looked on in awe, smiling and laughing and taking a picture. He thought everything they did was amazing. He accepted them fully, without holding anything back. He was their greatest encourager. And I mourn that he’s no longer there to provide that support, that confidence, that acceptance. But the memories of him, the love he shared with them, will last a lifetime. He’s left some big shoes to fill.

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