Eulogy

 

“Every day, we are living as source materials of the eulogy for people who love us”

It’s probably a morbid thought. But that’s what I thought to myself during a funeral. It’s someone we know from church. She was 80 and had an amazing, well-lived, and courageous life. She was surrounded by children, grandchildren, friends, and the community she built and was a part of. 

As a Buddhist, I have a comfortable relationship with death. Death doesn’t scare me. Obviously, I don’t want to die and I’m not ready to die, but death as an abstract concept is very comforting and very mundane to me. It’s quiet in the chaos. It’s the leaving instead of struggling. It’s “abandon all hope”

Yet, I could not help but wonder, what will be in my eulogy? I often romanticize my life, my romance, and yes, oftentimes, my death. Alas, I hang out with STEM people and very unromantic individuals. Also, the fact that I live in Canada, away from my family in Vietnam, away from most of my friends in Singapore, and the US, and we have no children, doesn’t really help. 

“When you’re falling in a forest and there’s nobody around, do you ever really crash, or even make a sound?” – Dear Evan Hansen

I hope my life at least made a ripple in someone else’s. I hope my work and my effort and my struggles inspire someone. I hope, at least, me being gay and brown and successful (and may I dare say, happy) provide some hope and bright spots for someone whom I do not know. I hope, even without a eulogy, people know and remember me as “one of the good ones”. Afterall, you don’t know how you are remembered when you are dead. Funerals and eulogies are for the living.

What will be in your eulogy?

P.S. This is my go-to funeral poem. I’d appreciate it if anyone remember and read it at my funeral 🙂 

My father moved through dooms of love – E. E. Cummings

…

Lifting the valleys of the sea
my father moved through griefs of joy;
praising a forehead called the moon
singing desire into begin

joy was his song and joy so pure
a heart of star by him could steer

…