TO
ERNIE
(On the occasion of his funeral)
I met him first when he was a
budding barrister.
He seemed above average in
intellect and perceptivity
(They do not always go together).
Subsequently we had many a
spirited exchange.
I did not always agree with him
nor he with me.
He could be exasperating (He must
have thought so of me).
But always he was a formidable
foil.
One thing on his side—he was
honest (I'll give him that).
With a persistent insistence on
sticking to the facts
As he knew them, or believed them
to be.
And he was as avid as he was
persistent
In the pursuit of truth and
justice as he saw them.
He asked no quarter and gave none.
To those who were close to him and
cared for him,
This could evoke a stark and
graceless encounter.
But had he not cared for them, he
would not have bothered
To put their care for him on the
line
In the interest of confronting
them with truth.
But one thing always prevailed for
good or for ill—
You knew where he stood and where you
stood with him.
And where he stood was
uncompromisingly for the right,
As, he saw the right, or thought
he saw the right.
Nor could any relationship with
him survive
If he did not perceive the same
spirit in the other.
And yet he was not without fault
or struggle.
In the later years he was beset by
physical ills.
Still, his faith remained secure.
A gift of God to his spirit,
untouched
By the cataclysms of the mortal
cocoon.
Indeed, through it he reached out
to others.
Nor was his assistance, confined
to matters of faith.
He had a heart for genuinely
serving his clients.
Unique in the practice of law, was
his earnest effort
To find the best way—the
practical, the simple, the least costly—
To resolve the tangles of troubled
human beings
Not always through the impersonal
juridical maze
But in the more personal climate
of reality and reason.
In these respects and more, we
will miss him—
The vacillating emotional tides
along with
The penetrating capacities of his
mind.
Perhaps there will be, perforce, a
calmer lagoon now.
But there will be also a strange
emptiness
In the absence of the tossing
seas.
But, be all of that as it may, he
is at rest now.
The "mortal coil" with
its earthly madness
Has been jettisoned and
there is now eternal calm.
David
Morsey
(February 11, 1991)