Not Ready
I went to a memorial service today. I’ve been to enough to know what they are like but this one was a little different. This guy wasn’t ready to go. He wasn’t young per se but at 62 he certainly wasn’t ready to go. Person after person came up to say a few words or tell a story about this guy. The entire place was packed almost standing room only. He wasn’t a celebrity by any means. But the amount of people, the number of friends, it all made me wonder what the difference was.
As many of you may already know through similar experiences, if you depart this world before “your time” so to speak, you tend to have a lot more people in your life. It’s just another fact of life I guess. If you live to be older than 80 or so (as luck would have it most of my relatives’ fall into this category) it just so happens that you don’t have all that many people around or at least in close contact as you used to. A casualty of a long life might be that there are fewer people around who remember you and what you have contributed during your life.
This was a series of thoughts I hadn’t had the opportunity to entertain before. Not that I want to pass before I’m of a ripe old age just to have a few more people show up to my funeral but you don’t necessarily think of these things on a normal day. It takes an event like this to really bring these sorts of things to light.
In this case a sad event. I admit I laughed a lot during this service, this guy lived his life by the seat of his pants and was a great husband, father, and friend to many. Person after person from all walks of life stood up to tell a story that usually ended in laughter. At the end of the day though, he was still gone.
I tried to avoid making it to the reception, I’m just not good with this stuff. I still ended up going, to pick up more kids of course. I saw all the people I really didn’t want to see and didn’t know what to say to try and make things better. But I suppose there really isn't anything one can say, to really make things better.
Jeff
As many of you may already know through similar experiences, if you depart this world before “your time” so to speak, you tend to have a lot more people in your life. It’s just another fact of life I guess. If you live to be older than 80 or so (as luck would have it most of my relatives’ fall into this category) it just so happens that you don’t have all that many people around or at least in close contact as you used to. A casualty of a long life might be that there are fewer people around who remember you and what you have contributed during your life.
This was a series of thoughts I hadn’t had the opportunity to entertain before. Not that I want to pass before I’m of a ripe old age just to have a few more people show up to my funeral but you don’t necessarily think of these things on a normal day. It takes an event like this to really bring these sorts of things to light.
In this case a sad event. I admit I laughed a lot during this service, this guy lived his life by the seat of his pants and was a great husband, father, and friend to many. Person after person from all walks of life stood up to tell a story that usually ended in laughter. At the end of the day though, he was still gone.
I tried to avoid making it to the reception, I’m just not good with this stuff. I still ended up going, to pick up more kids of course. I saw all the people I really didn’t want to see and didn’t know what to say to try and make things better. But I suppose there really isn't anything one can say, to really make things better.
Jeff
posted by Fej at 9:36 PM
4 Comments:
Just being there is as important as "saying the right thing". He sounds like a great guy. Sorry that you've lost a friend. :(
yeah, one of the sad things I've seen with older people (meaning over 80) is that so many of their friends have died. It must be lonely.
And I agree with panthergirl, just being there is the most important thing.
panthergirl was right, just remembering is more than enough... too many people pass unnoticed, unheeded.. i can understand your difficulty, i have the same myself but just letting people know you remember and care can be important...
Jeff, I'd never thought of it that way. The part about longer life meaning less people to remember you.
I'm not good with those sort of things, so it kinda scares me to think I will, at some point, have to go to some of those.
In any case, he sounded like a great guy and an example of how we should all live our lives.
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