in memory of my father, Harald Østensen

These are the words I wrote for my speech in memory of my loving father, who passed away on the 16th of June, 2011:

If there is one thing my dear father would not have wanted it is a tear jerking and pompous speech at his funeral, tenebrously recited and quickly forgotten.

Therefore this will not be one.

Neither will it be one that sings his professional praise and speaks of the many awards and recognitions he received for his humanitarian work, and of what a great man he was.
Others have done so in abundance (see for example here)

No, these words are as much to him as they are about him.

Last night (the night before his funeral) I went through all the photos I could find of him. He had meticulously digitized all his photographs from decades ago until recently and I had, luckily, copied them. Amongst these pictures, which really are moments seen through his eyes, there are also many pictures of him from his childhood, his student days, his early career, family life and these last, sombre but also very heart warming, years.

A recurring theme in these photos, and one I want to dwell on a little, is head gear…
My dad liked a good hat as much as the next hat loving person but did not in fact stop there; any item, whether intended as an item of cranial clothing or not, could easily find its way on to his head, and this sometimes to the great embarrassment of the rest of us.
One could never quite know what to expect when he was coming to pick one up from the airport; what curiosity (and accompanying plaque) would adorn his head this time..!?

He had, or has had, Borsalino hats, a Stetson cowboy hat, “nisseluer”, “oloflue” and a plethora of others that I don’t even know how to classify (and that includes once having worn a metal cheese dome in a classy restaurant…oh what embarrassment that was…)
He even walked in to a shop exclusively for the clergy in Rome and bought himself a Monseigneur hat in the finest rabbit fur! He wore it too, I might add.

He had these, and he wore them, because it was who he was; a man who delighted in fun and enjoyed the enjoyable. My dad, Harald, was a man who quite simply loved to love life, and he wore his hats (and other items) to show it.

Those pictures, those memories, of the fun loving, smiling, man who loved so much is what I want to keep and what I want you to keep in your hearts. Even when the cancer had sunk its claws deep in him and he was weakened and suffered so much did he maintain his lovable sense of mischief and cheek.

That was who he was, that was the man who was my father.

I want to leave you with one little poignant anecdote; when he was very ill, in a hospital in France, he told me a story that I didn’t really fully appreciate until now; He told me how as a young doctor he had been working on one of the islands in the south-west of Norway. On this island one of his patients was an elderly lady who now lived alone but who had moved there when she married.
She had told him how she was always the stranger on that island; always the “outsider” despite having lived there for perhaps as much as fifty years.
My dad said to me, and I remember the expression on his face when he did, that he never wanted to end up like that; like a stranger somewhere in a strange place.

Therefore he came back here and now he has found peace in the town where he grew up, followed to his last resting place near his parents by family and friends.
He came here not as a stranger, but as one of you.

Advertisement