Eulogies for the Living: Expressing Gratitude Before It’s Too Late

Video Transcript

My dad was really funny…just a random P.S. “I’m sure I’ve forgotten something.” By the way, it was four pages long so maybe he didn’t forget anything. “I’m sure I’ve forgotten something but I’m told at 81, I’m permitted to make these lapses.”

As an adult, my dad and I had a really long relationship in writing letters to one another. He would write these long-form letters — kind of hard to read, his writing was hard to read — but these are so precious to me, so precious, that I bought a safe — a fire safe — to keep them in.

One of the most powerful comments he had ever written in a letter that I still call up today, is… I had moved from the Midwest of the United States out to Seattle at a younger age with no friends, no job, very little money, and he wrote a note to me in a letter where he said, “I’m in awe of my child doing such a brave thing.” And I keep that on my wall, 30 years later. And it reminds me of the strength that I have and the strength he’s given me and the unabashed support of no matter what I would choose to do he would find a way to encourage me. He wrote something in the letter as well like, “You went to a place where you didn’t know if there’d be dragons there but you found your way and I’m so proud of you.”

My dad was very revered in our community, our small little town in Wisconsin. With all the accolades my dad received over the years one article really stood out for me and he sent it to us all, meaning my siblings and me, kind of reluctantly because his ego was always parked at the door. He wasn’t there to toot his own horn, but he said, “Hey, this was in the paper and well, it’s better than having it said over your casket.” And it really hit me. And it was in that moment that I thought, wow, he’s right, you know. These things that we say to one another only matter when we can hear and see them and savor them. Not so useful when there’s a casket involved.

We always think of death as far, far away. And it may be, but we don’t know. And so today is the day to do the thing, or the things, and to say the things or the sentiments that we keep holding back because we figure there’ll be more time. And so I thought, today’s the day, man, seize it. So I took it upon myself to write him a letter. I called it “The time of living tribute.” I knew that calling it a eulogy wouldn’t really be the jam of someone who is still alive. And I sent it off.

I do still have a copy of the letter, so I can read part of it.

[reading] With the hope that this is more welcomed than morbid, I’ll give you what I’ll call A Living Eulogy, my tribute to you for all that you have built in this world. Please understand, of course I love having you here on the planet and want you to know now, not later when it may be too late, how I feel about all that you are. To me you embody the following quote by John Ruskin, the British architect: “When we build, let us think that we build forever. Let it not be for present delight or for present use alone. Let it be such work as our descendants will thank us for and let us think, as we join one board to another that a time is to come when that wood will be held sacred because our hands have touched it. And that men will say, as they look upon the labor and wrought substance of them, ‘See! This our father did for us.'”

And then I list out all the things that he built, there were so many. And I close with a quote from Abraham Lincoln.

[reading] Abraham Lincoln was speaking of men like you when he said, “I like the man who loves the community it which he lives and so lives that his community loves him.” Dad, in admiration of all these literal and figurative boards you’ve joined end to end, I do so steeply thank you. What you have built has undoubtably been built forever. It is such an honor to be one of your descendants.

I am moved by that letter because it is true, every word is true. And I’m moved because I know it made a difference in the world, and to him, of course.

In a world now where there are so many more screens than ever before and we are interacting with screens more than people, writing letters that show others how they’re impacting us has a disproportionate impact.

Deep down we’re craving visibility and craving knowing that we’re being seen. Again, we’re so used to a digital life and when we can actually get a note that we can hold in our hands and be remembered, and call up any time as a tangible proof that we’re making a difference, it makes a difference to us as humans. Just some way that we recognize someone’s way of showing up. And not just honoring and appreciating them, like a thank you card, but really noticing a special contribution that they make that is deeply their own, is reflective of the legacy that they could live into if they knew how they’re really impacting you or others.

When my dad was dying, he was 96, and we as a family decided that the best thing for him was to have hospice care. The hospice team was so instrumental in paving the way for him to die peacefully that I was inspired to become a hospice volunteer myself. I sit with people who are dying, and I relieve the caregivers so that they can go get groceries, or take a nap or read a book.

People who are dying, generally a universal truth about people in that situation, it gets really simple. They want to know, one, that they’re loved. And number two, they want to know that they’ve loved well. So anything we can do at the bedside or leading up to the bedside — if they’re in a bed — and you have that opportunity, is to let them know those things.

We don’t have to overcomplicate it. I think we tend to because we’re human, we have big brains, and maybe we just haven’t learned yet that it’s simpler than we realize.

When my dad was towards the end of his life, it was pretty obvious that this was near the end. And so one morning I remember sitting with him in his living room, 20 feet from where he was born, same house…and I said, “Tell me, are you afraid of what’s next?” And he said, “No, I feel that I’ve lived a full life.” And he was a bit of a stoic but very accepting of whatever life brought him, including what death was going to bring him.

As I looked at his body at the end, once he’d died, he was kind of gaunt. And the meaning I made from that, his body being thin and kind of wasted, was that he had wrung all of life out of itself, and his body reflected his having lived life with gusto. And up until the end he was curious and engaging and fun. So I allow that image of his gaunt body not to be morbid for me but to inform how I want to continue to live my life and wring all the joy and all the value and all the gusto out of it in the same way.

I would like to go out with a smile on my face, surrounded by people I care about. Pretty simple, pretty profound. Can’t beat that.