Teddy Wetzel's Prayer

An excerpt from the August 11, 2017 eulogy for Robert Edward "Teddy" Wetzel

By Scot & Charlotte Wetzel

Dear Heavenly Father,

We have faith in you and Christ our Lord and Savior, and your plan for us and our family. We know that you have taken Teddy into your arms, and that he shares with you our love, in the light of heaven. We cannot understand the purpose in his passing, but we trust in you implicitly, and we thank you for sharing our child with us for these few short years.

Thank you God, for his genuine smile, his happy blue eyes like his mothers, his infectious laugh, and his curly mane of hair. Thank you for his quiet confidence like that of his grandfather Ted, for his southern grace and charm like that of his grandmother Kay, for his social nature and warm embrace like that of his grandfather Thomas, and for his core loving personality and sensitive, charitable, soul, like that of his grandmother Marni.

Thank you Lord for brothers, and their days together as Musketeers, with adventures in the Telluride backcountry on skis, in tents in aspen forests in the Colorado mountains, for funny inside jokes together like “Guess what? ………chicken butt!”, and flappy golf. Thank you for cousins and aunts and uncles in backyard croquet and basketball games with Teddy, for river-side water balloon fights, mountain bike rides at Winter Park, and chip shots on the Hiwan golf course.

We thank you God, for days in the sailboat with Teddy on the Chesapeake Bay, with the tiller stiff and the mainsail tight, racing across the water under a sunny Virginia sky.

Thank you God for Teddy’s “j” paddle strokes, canoeing with mom, for letting him chauffeur her in Bumblebee and catch soft shelled crabs together with her on the dock, for tying flies on her line when the hook eyes got too small to see, and for letting him share that he didn’t like her ripped designer jeans because if you bought clothes, you should get the entire garment you paid for, not just part of it.

Thank you God for all the butterflies, who, somehow, had a magnetic connection to Teddy, and who always seemed to find him the preferred landing zone wherever he went, despite a sea of alternative options.

Thank you God for our young warrior on the lacrosse field, for brothers together on the line, for hat-tricks, rusty gates, swim-dodges, de-twigs and BTBs, and for walking softly and carrying a big stick, like another Teddy he admired. Thank you for teammates, brothers and sisters on the field, white power wristbands with Teddy’s name on them, tough play and hard work, and ultimately, for all-stars.

Thank you dear Lord, for blessing Teddy as the most amazing and gifted fisherman we ever knew. Thank you for his remarkably graceful fly casting, his ability to catch any type of fish, anywhere there was water, and for the friendships he made with close pals on the lakes, rivers, and oceans, of your glorious world. Thank you God for that one last bonefish, under a tropical sky over a Caribbean sea, where ambition was finally rewarded and fulfilled, with friends and family there to share.

Thank you God for simply letting Teddy be our son, and for our days together in the turkey and deer blinds, chasing elk on the mountain top, brook trout in alpine streams, or tarpon in the oceans. Thank you for flyrods and landing nets, drift boats and flats boats, Polaris Rangers and backpacks. Thank you for quiet moments together, when no words were necessary, because we were linked by spirit and soul, as father and son.

Most of all, thank you Lord for giving Teddy all those best qualities from our family, and your image, that made him his own person, that drew friends to him, and that earned him admiration from anyone who knew him.

And finally, Thank You God Almighty, for catching our son in your golden embrace at the time of your choosing, and for sharing Teddy’s Strength, his Kindness, and his Love, with all of us here today. We revel in the light of his lasting legacy, and we will remember, with the help of your guiding hand, that in the end, above all else, what Teddy was, was beautiful.

In your name we pray Lord,

Amen.