I Went to a Funeral Today ...

I went to a funeral today.  Grandad has known this dear lady and her husband around 15 years.  I've known them for the past several years.  The dear friend is an ovarian cancer survivor of over a decade, but the cancer returned ... along with double pneumonia. The doctors were measuring her life expectancy in days and told both her & her sweet husband that she would never walk out the doors of her hospital room.  She told her husband and doctor that she was 74 years old and had lived a good life, and that she was ready when her time had come to leave this earth.  When her doctor left her hospital room, our sweet friend began giving her husband instructions -- his morning medications as well as evening ones, walking with the cane that his doctors had ordered him to use -- only thinking of him and his future well-being as he would prepare to go through his days without her.

Her service today was a beautiful testament of her life -- the heartfelt words her 

broken-hearted husband spoke of as her being the love of his life... her step-daughter's heartwarming memories of her love for life, traveling and photographing animals... a close friend of 25 years remembering her warmth for all who met her... a director at the cancer center choking back her tears as she recounted the heart for others in the desire to find a cure for the disease that she had fought for years but so that others would not suffer as she had.  This wonderful woman had already written the words that would be spoken at her own funeral -- words that she had not dictated or written beforehand.  But simply in who she was during her breathing moments here on earth.

In a couple of my previous posts I've given an excerpt from Linda Dillow's book What's it Like to be Married to Me?  ... where she takes us on a little scene going to a funeral -- our own.  And she asks the question of what would we want our husbands to say of us at our own funeral.  Then I even took this a step further and asked what would I want anyone who has even known me to say at my own funeral.  

And today it hit home.

If I want to leave a legacy of trustworthiness, faithfulness, loyalty, love, forgiveness, reliability, nurturer (do you see the traits I'm hoping for?) ... then how am I living my life right now in order to be remembered by them when I'm no longer on this earth?  I've said it before ... and it's worth repeating (because sometimes I'm a slow learner of my own lessons) ... 

I can't expect 

if I'm not willing to give.

I went to a funeral today ... 

and started living again today.  

He's been my priority for 30 years :)