Paul Federoff

Condolences

• Uncle Paul.

  I remember you. And somehow, it is only now that I realise how clearly I see you.

  When I was young, you were this fierce paternal presence in my life. Protective. Encouraging. Unapologetically yourself. A lion.

  I was just a skinny teenager then, a little lost, living with Nan, trying to work out who I was and what this strange world expected of me. I looked to all of you, my uncles and aunts, for some sense of how a life might be lived. But I remember you especially. You were one of those people who could make the darkness feel less permanent. You made me believe there was something ahead of me worth walking toward.

  You would say, “Keep going. You can do anything you want in life. The only thing stopping you is you.”

  I wish I had known you more deeply as we both grew older. I wish I could have sat beside you, man to man, and told you that I remembered those words. That they stayed with me.

  And that, in my own stubborn, imperfect way, I did keep going.

  I did many of the things that frightened me. I crossed oceans. I fell down. I began again. I made a life that the uncertain boy you once encouraged could hardly have imagined.

  So thank you.

  Thank you for seeing something in me before I knew how to see it in myself. Thank you for the protection, the laughter, the encouragement, and most of all for always being completely and authentically you.

  Perhaps that is the strange mercy of death. A life does not simply disappear when a body does. We leave ourselves everywhere. In words remembered decades later. In courage passed unknowingly from one person to another. In choices somebody makes because, once upon a time, someone told them they could.

  The atoms that made you will return to the universe they came from, taking other forms, becoming other things. But there is another kind of continuation too. The human one. The echo.

  And yours is still travelling.

  Some part of you is in all of us who knew you, altered by you in ways we may only recognise now. Perhaps that is as close to eternity as any of us need to come.

  Rest wherever the universe has carried you, Uncle Paul.

  And thank you, from the skinny little nephew you once believed in.

  Love always,

  Squid

   

  Shane , 27 August 2026

  😢 2 👍 2 ❤ 1

• My big brother Paul,

  my safe place, my guide,

  always with an open door

  and love by my side

   

  you were there in important times and watched over me 

  in the storm and the sun,

  your the kindest of hearts of anyone

   

  i will be the one on the steady steed,

  carrying the laughter of our greatest deed

  As you always lived life with a shine,

  yelling,."come on , number seven, as it 

  crosses the line,

   

  I will see you again,

  my dear good friend,

  where the long roads turn

  and the sorrows end,

   

  holding you close

  to the memories we made,

  in the warmth of a light

  that will never fade.

   

  love always

  kim

   

  KimTartaro , 27 August 2026

  👍 2 ❤ 2 😢 1