Morton A. Breier
6/30/34 - 3/25/04
Eulogy to my father, Morton A. Breier, given at his memorial.
I remember Morton Breier in two ways, as a father and as a person. By definition, these are not exclusive properties, father and person, for one can obviously be both. But Morty was to me as I guess all of our parents are to all of us, separately a father and a person. The remembrance of Morty as each brings different emotions and therefore different word.
Morty was my father. He gave me life. He sustained me and loved me during childhood and saw that when the time came, I left his nest on solid footing in the world. I will always thank and honor him for this. Like any father he had his admirable qualities and he had his faults. He was a teacher by example even if he didn’t know it. His incessant motivation to create something out of nothing, to rationalize the seemingly irrational did not go unnoticed. It would help in shaping the qualities I strove for in becoming a man. Advice was given when asked for, but seldom doled out spontaneously. He gave sound opinions but tended to be skeptical and critical. Encouragement was rare. Gaining self-confidence under his watch was difficult.
Now let me put this in perspective. I loved Morty as a father. He was not perfect. But then who is? Would it have been better to have a father whose example was in the indulgence of leisurely inactivity. A father who avoided addressing painful realities by always telling me everything was ok? However he did it, my father showed me that our only limitation in life is the fear of failure that we impose on ourselves. The confidence he had in his own mind as a machine of logic and reason helped him to conquered these fears. I was lucky enough to be the witness and the beneficiary of this phenomenon. I can think of kinder, but in the end no better gift than those he gave to me. I love you dad. Thank you for being my father.
Morty was a person in my life. A person I was lucky enough to get to know and later befriend as an adult, when father and son were not as dominant a theme. I believe we all have different takes on Morty. Some may remember him as a philosopher, espousing the notion of human evolution as a simultaneous microcosmic unfolding of increasingly complex molecular structures and the macrocosmic expansion of world consciousness. Some may remember Morty as a socialite, always willing to put on a party hat at the last minute to be center stage at the happening du jour. Or Morty as the artist, taking proverbial blank slates, be they the empty void of cyber-space, those infamous paper-napkins, over-grown plots of land or simply silence and filling them with his sparks of creation in the form of psychedelic web-pages, beautiful mandalas, 12 sided pavillions or the beat of a conga drum. Indeed I hold an impression or a take on Morty that is all my own. I don’t believe there is a wrong or right way to remember Morty. All These dimensions I’ve described are nothing more than different permutations of Morty doing Morty as he would say. But Man, did he do Morty well. I believe it was Morty’s pursuit of the truth in life that made Morty so special. The common denominator if you will in all his endeavors. Sometimes as we all do, he looked in the wrong place and sometimes in the right place. But never for a moment did he stop looking for life’s answers. And this what made Morty so magnetic, so loveable. When the truth came easily, it resulted in beatiful outpourings of the soul that we heard in Morty’s philosophy, read in his poetry, and witnessed in his creations. When the truth didn’t come easily, it manifested itself in a different way- his argumentativeness or his sometimes manic focus for example- I saw this as a kind of wrestling match with the world. An imaginary battle in which answers to life’s questions were the spoils for the victor. Of course Morty would be the first to tell you who to bet on when battling with the World. But in some ways, the battles fought held equal beauty as the battle won. To me, nothing is more noble than the ardent pursuit of life’s true meanings. So getting back to the common denominator in everyone’s admiration for Morty, I believe it was in witnessing the magnificence that radiated from a soul who was willing to take on these challenges that drew everyone to him. Morty,
And now I hope the answers to all of life’s questions are revealed to you Morty, my friend, my father. The Universe, the Big Bang, evolution, the space-time continuum, yin and yang and most importantly the secret of eternal and everlasting love. I miss you Dad, Morty. Godspeed.
Hawaiian Shrine to Morty