| Vikingdad |
05-04-2012 06:28 AM |
What Would You Want Said At Your Funeral?
Recent events have gotten me to thinking and C3's post on the joke thread prompted me to ask this question.
Most of us have been to a few funerals. The most awkward part in nearly every one I have been to has been when the people attending are asked to share their memories and few people do. I feel awkward because I do not take the time to think about what to say when that moment comes and nobody is standing up and speaking. This most recently happened just a couple of months ago and I was sitting there trying to get myself to stand up and speak but the words just would not come. I have resolved to not let that happen again.
So anyhow, one time when I did find the words was at my mother-in-law's funeral. Old Doris loved me like a son, up until her daughter chose to visit me rather than do some menial task for her not too very long after we had started dating. Now, I had been working for their family business for 10 years before my wife and I began dating, so there was some history there. But after that time when my wife came to visit me Doris started hating on me. I never let it get to me (and man-o-man I could tell you some hating mother-in-law stories!) and towards the end she sort of came out of it and started regretting things. At any rate, when the funeral director asked if anyone wanted to say anything I stood right up and said the following (condensed and paraphrased).
"When I was 13 I started working for the family and Doris treated me like a son. After a couple of years I would tend the business during the week when things were painfully slow. Sometimes we would get one customer in a day. Now Doris was known as a great cook, particularly in regards to baking and sweets. Doris knew I was bored and lonely on those days, so she would come by with hot chocolate chip cookies and a few Playboy magazines. She knew what a teenage boy liked. Food and girls, not in that particular order."
I like to think that what I said loosened things up, whether that is true or not, people opened up and spoke for quite some time.
OK, now what would you like to hear at your own funeral? My mother was horrified at what I said at my mother-in-law's funeral, yet Doris was laughing from above.
Maybe a better way for me to end this would be to ask everybody to think of what to say when that moment comes when you are at a funeral or memorial service. Don't say anything upsetting to anybody and don't be to long-winded. But do come up with something to say. It will help the survivors to know that their departed one was loved, was appreciated and did matter. Silence says the opposite.
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