I am posting here several readings done at the funeral, beginning with the eulogy that I gave.
 
Eulogy to Glen Driscoll, by Brian Driscoll
 
'I would like to thank you all for coming out today to offer your final farewells to Glen. Your presence is an honor to his memory and a comfort to his family.
 
'I wrote this eulogy several days ago. Since then, the family has had an opportunity to sift through the artifacts of Glen's life, and it has become apparent that there was a dimension to Glen that he kept largely to himself. We now know that he documented his thoughts in extensive writings, some public but many private. And that he touched many people along the way, both strangers who briefly entered his life and old acquaintances who had lost touch but never lost faith in the friendships they had shared.
 
'Most poignant was how little self-regard he had had, anticipating his own death while deeming himself unworthy even of a funeral to mark his passing.
 
'As I look back on the turbulent trajectory of Glen's 51 years, I imagine it would be easy to conclude that my brother had neither a happy nor a successful life. His was a life of challenges and self-doubts from an early age, and in recent years those difficulties grew while his capacity to meet them diminished. In these past few months, as his health declined further, he was haunted by fears for his future and how little command he felt he had over it.
 
'But it would be very wrong to suggest that Glen lacked hopes and dreams, that he experienced no real success or that he found little joy in life.
 
'We, his family, knew from his early years that Glen marched toa different beat. The youngest child of four, Glen did not follow a conventional path to success at school. Nor did he slide smoothly into a career in adulthood, though he usually enjoyed the employment opportunities he found along the way.
 
'And perhaps ironically, while Glen was the only one of us four siblings not to receive any formal musical training, he was the only one to have any real musical talent. That became one of the two passions of his life, and one to which he devoted countless hours and while he expressed with an exuberance, abandon and mastery that only accompanies serious musical ability.
 
'While on occasion he displayed his piano skills publicly, mostly he was his own audience, and that extended to the works Glen composed but rarely revealed outside his four bedroom walls, many of which we have only discovered since his death.
 
'But even before Glen found his talents on the keyboard, he had already developed a fascination for history '” not the dusty history of textbooks but the kind of historical knowledge gleaned from tramping around old pioneer sites within his limited reach and listening at any opportunity to the tales of old-timers who once populated the disappearing ghost towns of BC.
 
'That desire to connect with the past took Glen to the Yukon, and an immersion in the storied history of the Klondike that afforded him the most creative and happy years of his adult life and a well of experiences and tales that he continued to draw upon till the end of that life.
 
'Just last month, Glen was telling Kim and I , among a raft of other tales from his time up north, the origin of Dawson City's infamous sourtoe cocktail and how you couldn't say you'd experienced it till you had 'kissed the toe'. Of course, he was well aquainted with that appalling appendage though he'd never had the misfortune, as others had, of swallowing while imbibing the legend.
 
'Perhaps more important than a motherload of stories, the Yukon served for Glen, as it does for other kindred spirits, as a last frontier for people who function best outside the confines of mainstream society, a place where judgment falls less heavily on exceptional individuals.
 
'My brother's greatest gift, i believe, was his facility for storytelling. A keen and intelligent observer of life and all its ironies, he enjoyed nothing more than to chat up the people around him, even perfect strangers, absorbing their stories and unselfconsciously sharing his ow. It was his way of engaging with the everyday world around him, and he was good at it.
 
'In recent months, Glen began taking refuge from his fears in long evening walks that allowed him to clear his mind and face his troubles for another day. It was on one of these walks that he met his end. But I would like to think that in those final footsteps before his heart rebelled, Glen found some tranquility of mind in the chill evening air and some joy in reacquainting himself with the familiar pathways of the neighbourhood he grew up in.
 
'I need not remind that Glen's death falls most heavily upon our mother. While he lives, she struggled to maintain a home for the both of them, knowing how much he relied on her support as his health declined. To this, it may be said that Glen's death is a blessing in disguise. If so, it is the final tragedy of his troubled life that such should be his epitaph.
 
'But Glen did not want to die in the street that night. And modest as they may have been, the unrealized projects of his life still animated his aspirations. He held onto the hope that they might be fulfilled. And in that light, we can see that his was not a failed life. It was an unrealized life in which the rewards proved, in the end, insufficient to sustain heart and soul.'
 
Below I reproduce two selections of Glen's writings that were read aloud at the memorial service.
 
'It's not the length of our stay upon this Earth or the amount of wealth we may amass in that time that define who we are. Nor is it the mountains we endeavor to conquer just to be able to scream out '˜World, I was here'. It's never anything to momentous that makes one reach the pinnacle of life. Its the tiny ripples created with every stone cast with love and friendship that make us who we are or wish to be. And I only wish that I had created more of those ripples. But the ones there, I will always embrace and cherish in the knowledge that they were mine.'
 
The second piece Glen entitled
 
'Those With the Least Seem to Give the Most'
 
'A number of years back I drove for a delivery service, and one of our contracts was with Eaton's. And one of the services would be to, in the spring, pick up fur coats from private residences and deliver them to the Eaton's cold storage facility. Then again in the fall we'd just reverse the procedure. 

'Most of the clients were either wealthy or lived quite well. They were often indifferent to me and more concerned with the possession they were about to entrust to this lowly courier. 'Be careful, you know what thing's worth?'
 
'One day, I drove into a Vancouver east side neighborhood and pulled up to a very modest house. Nothing screamed wealth here. It looked to have been built in the 1940s after the war and sold to soldiers returning home. It was a modest size, easy to heat and reasonably cheap. 

'The gentleman who greeted me at the door was, I would say, in his 80s but was more likely in his 70s. His wife was there in the background, which seemed a backdrop to years of love and caring. Pictures carefully placed on the mantel, the old furniture, which had no doubt seen better times. But there they were, the two together as if they'd been '¦ As a young married couple, the husband would have had to scrimp and save religiously to afford this accommodation, and maybe with the bank's help was able to acquire their first and maybe last home. But it was their home. A place to raise a family of their own, watch them grow and watch them go.
 
'The wife brought out the modest fur coat and together they wrapped it in a plastic garment bag. The couple appeared to have a small income and this coat was precious. He had no doubtingly secretly set aside a portion of his monthly wage and at a special time presented his wife with this luxury. Going to a fancy restaurant a couple times a year was all he could afford. And she would wear it proud. Not because of its worth, but the love that came with it. And she could feel like the princess he always knew she was.
 
'When he handed me the coat it wasn't with a lecture to take care of it, because I think he already knew I would. But he gave me a smile, a thank you and a 10 dollar bill. 

'I took care of that coat as if it were my own mother's. I did spend the 10 dollars, though in many ways wished I had kept it, for it came from the same place that house and coat had. The heart.
 
'Those with the least truly seem to give the most.'

Dear Sella,
 We are very sorry for your loss. We're thinking of you and want to pass along our sympathy. Please take care.
 Kathy and Bill Lambert

Dear Sella,
 We are sorry to hear of Glen's passing. Thinking of you and your family as you grieve and heal.
 God's Richest Blessings to you all
 
Shelley and Claire Brown

OBITUARY

Glen Harold Driscoll

January 1, 1900 – March 8, 2011

Bell & Burnaby Funeral Chapel

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