Someone in our family passed away this week. She lived a good long life and died peacefully in her sleep. We will miss her terribly now, but look forward to seeing her again someday in Heaven.
I was asked to speak at the Memorial Service. Generally that would terrify me…but this time I was glad to say “yes”. Although it’s never “easy” to speak at a funeral, it will be easy to find nice things to say about her. I won’t have to be “creative”. I won’t have to “make stuff up”. I will simply have to tell the story of someone I admire and respect. It will be easy to find examples in her life of her faith and her values. It will be an “easy” eulogy.
So sorry in advance for the “downer” question…but this has got me thinking. How “easy” would it be for someone to write my eulogy? How about yours? Would it be “creative writing 101″…or “the greatest story ever told”? We are “writing our own eulogy” every day…will it be an “easy” story to tell?
hmmm….mine would be “interesting” not sure if it would be all good! I just lost my Grandma and she was a phenominal lady, so I can relate about it being easy to write about her…it was hard to read, but I wrote her a letter and read it at her funeral. She’s much happier where she is now!
Eulogies are like flowers, we should give them to a person before they die. I don’t mean to say that we wait til someone is on the brink of passing on. Maybe we should do it for our parents immediately and perhaps sometime in the near future with someone we love and admire. Change the name from Eulogy (which is kind of foreign to me anyways, probably Greek or Latin) and call it a life statement, volume one. The problem is all the members in my family are very reserved, we don’t say I love you with words, it’s more of an action type of expression for us. So everything I just suggested I probably won’t do.
Ok Don, here is yours:
It’s missing several pages, because the only thing I know about your early life is that you were in a “hair band” in the 80’s. Despite having a weird fondness for the word “neck-ed”, (naked to the rest of us) you are a great preacher dude. You do a great job at breaking down the stereotypes that we have with biblical characters, which is only one of many things you have done to serve our church and community. The “Bebe Gun God” Christmas service, was just phenomenal and all the other ones have done so much for me. Who else would stand before a church crowd and tell us that biblical characters don’t poop butterflies? Wisdom, is like your middle name because of how you put this church together, and how you are planning for its future.
I could say more but this is a response venue, and not a book writing venue.
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