Sometimes the best eulogy for a funeral is based on simplicity. With a moving anecdote or example you can illustrate someone's life as you bring a smile to grieving faces. Emotions are usually already highly attuned--highly suggestible and ready to respond. But no matter whether sentimental, inspirational, or humorous, the ending problem always seems to me to be the same:
A living, vital human being who was an integral part of life is no longer here--what to make of that? Where there was once a vibrant person, an indispensable part of our lives, is gone, and there is a void punctuated by a casket or an urn. What to make of that? What are we, after all, to leave after our time closes?
As I have moved through life, I have faced this more often. Most recently, just this weekend with my stepdad, David. He touched all of our lives, none more so than Mom's. Her story will go on, but his has ended. For maybe the first time in her life, she is alone--in a house by herself. No kids left in the house with her for whom she has to put on a brave face. What can you even make of that predicament?
But that surprisingly heavy box of ashes that was all that was left of David is not really his end. Even regardless of your personal stance on resurrection and religion, there is a transcendence about us that beggars death. During the many stories-some poignant and some funny--shared during the funeral, in the obituary, at his brother's house afterwards as we all assembled, I realized that a critical difference that characterizes humanity is that we continue to be vital and central even after we are gone.
We live in the stories and the memories. As we share the same tales endlessly, we create a mythology surrounding each and every one of us. My kids never met my grandfather, James Raeford Harrington, he having died when I was 7, but they know his mythology. From the stories of his adventures and scrapes told to them when they were young. They know he was a technophile who HAD to have the latest and greatest goods, like the unbreakable Christmas ornaments he promptly shattered while demonstrating them to the family. They know he was serious about protecting his family, as shown by the story of his driving an hour home from the office to investigate the snake that was terrifying my grandmother from the backyard--a snake that turned out to be a tall tuft of grass caught in the wind.
We all know him from these stories and more, told every holiday to each other until they ring with a familiar cadence of memory. This is what stories do, this mythology that holds us together. I have similar stories of all those who we have lost over the years, these memories that keep friends and family present with us as long as we can remember. When our time is up, we will take our place in the stories in the same way.
One of the best David stories for me was so simple and profound that I can see it in my mind's eye. It was related by Stanley. Stanley told us that he married into the family. Specifically, that means that his sister married one of David's brothers. To some people, that might not be a significant relationship. but to the Alexander family in general, and David in particular, all connections are important.
At some general family gathering, Stanley told us, there was a discussion about a problem or controversy faced by one of the relatives. Just like most of us might say, Stanley did not give his opinion on the matter, telling David "Well, that sounds like a family matter to me."
David, with that winking glint in his eye I know so well, told him "Stanley, you ARE family." That reply rang so true to David's big-hearted outlook on what it means to belong that I felt like I had been shot in the heart with an arrow of truth. Although I came into the Alexander clan as an adult rather than a child, I and Stacey and the kids were accepted just as if I had grown up in the family. That inclusivity is so characteristic of my experience that Stanley's story will stay with me always.
So I am assured that although David may not be making new stories any longer, he is still present as we create his mythology. Through our memories and the memories of those that will hear them in the future, even those too young to remember him, he will have honor and humor and respect within those who knew and loved him and were loved by him.
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