May 4, 2023
“There are no goodbyes for us. Wherever you are, you will always be in my heart.”
– Gandhi
Joe told his new friend Carolyn, only half in jest, “I want you to deliver my eulogy because you say only good things about me … and everyone else knows the truth.” Our lives are never black and white. They’re a mixture of good and bad and everything else in between. And yet we always remember the good in a eulogy, the good and the heartbreaking wonderful times that are gone.
Human weakness contributes to a lot of bad decisions in life and most of us aren’t the person we want to be. That’s life. None of us is perfect although hopefully we’re all striving to be a better person tomorrow than we were today.
In eulogies we remember the best for a reason. The times we loved, the times we were unselfish, the times we were compassionate, the times we sacrificed for others, were the times we were at our best, and we want to remember our deceased loved ones at our best, even though we may have often seen them at their worst.
You’ve heard the common saying that you’ll never see a U-Haul behind a hearse because everything material that you acquired in life, you can’t take it with you. The only thing that we can take with us are the acts of love that we did. And so for good reason, we gather our notes for a eulogy or a memorial service, we remember those acts of love and kindness because they are what will live forever in eternity and in our hearts.
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Make a special effort to remember, and record, acts of kindness so they never grow hazy in your memory.