Day 3: End of the year read between the lines – too short series
Disclaimer: Today, my thoughts are clear to me but seemingly jumbled for others. Remember to read between the lines.
What are you doing with the dash between your birth date and death date? That’s got to be one of the top 5 cliché questions/statements I hear at funerals. My answer is always that I’m existing in a world crumbling around me and that’s good enough.
Dear World,
Is it just me who notices that the manner in which a person dies determines how their “send off” is officiated? If someone dies by any way other than a perceived natural cause, shame and judgement often accompany the word delivered. I hate that.
Almost every funeral I’ve been to addresses the “what did they do with their time on Earth” discussion. Were they purposeful? Were they positively impactful? Did they truly change lives?
Yaddi yadda ya.
Sometimes people just live as each day comes and goes. The farthest thing from their minds is how they’ll “change the world today”. This is especially true for folks with inner turmoil that no one else really knows about.
Everyone is stressed in some kind of way and going through something that no one else seems to understand or can help with. As such, folks face their days as best as they can. They do that by existing and just being.
What I’m trying to say is that we shouldn’t do funerals and memorial services to judge people by the awesome things they did or didn’t do for others or the world.
If the deceased has done brilliant works and amazing deeds, by all means celebrate them and their work. Just don’t make it all about how others benefited.
Perhaps we should, instead, look at how people faced the world day after day despite the darkness that engulfed them. How did they feed their soul? Sometimes that will look and sound like not doing a damn thing to improve the world. It could be that they turned their pillow over and went back to sleep – and that’s okay!
There are folks who bring the brightest light and are breaking apart by the darkness inside. Remember that. So, if people like that exist: knowing that they made it out of bed, scratched their bum or fluffed their pillow, then they existed for them when they needed to just be. If people leave us by their own choice and doing, acknowledge them for who they were for themself and then talk about who they impacted.
If you’re grieving right now, I’m sorry for your loss and I’m sending you as much love as I can muster.
Read between these lines at least twice as you wrap 2022. A gem or two may be buried there for you to find.
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Signed,
The Suburban Girl JA
The Suburban Girl JA® 