OK, I know this is off topic for a real estate website, but let me offer a piece of free advice. Please, please, please, do your eulogizer a favor. I'll get to the favor in a second. Saturday, I found out that an old friend passed away. His family called and asked if I would conduct the service, and of course, I complied. It went fine, but it reminded me of quite a few others that were a struggle.
I've probably done a hundred or more funerals over the past forty years. I always sit with the family as the first thing I do when preparing a service. I want to know what the family would like the world to know about their departed loved one. Most of the time I receive a lot of great stories, some accomplishments, favorite hobbies and a lot of snippets of a life lived. My goal is for the attendees to really feel good when they leave the service. It's possible.
On a few occasions, I have had the family members unable to give me a paragraph of information about their loved one. On two occasions, I actually asked the family if they lived together. They did. How could you spend a lifetime with someone and not know them? I hope it was more that they were overcome with grief and couldn' think. At both of those services, I had a paragraph about the deceased. I had to create a service around that paragraph. It worked out, but it would have been so much nicer if the attendees could have walked out with a fond memory.
Here is my suggestion, go ahead and write what you would like the world to know about you. Where did you go to school? What did you do as a youth that was memorable? What about your marriage (if married), children, extended family members? Did you go to college? Where, when, what did you study?
What's a life event that had a great impact on you? If you worked, what did you do for employment? Did you own a business? What were the loves of your life, i.e., gardening, pets, traveling, etc. Did you overcome a life challenge like cancer, early death of a parent or parents, or a child? What made you the person you were at the time of death? What were your favorite things to do?
You see where I'm going here? Help the person who is about to do a eulogy for you know where to take it. The funeral I did yesterday was not difficult because I knew the deceased, but I've done a lot for people I did not know. Those can be a challenge, but when the family can share a lot of great things about the deceased, it does go much smoother. Take a little time and create your own eulogy text. I've told my wife for decades that I'm going to pre-record my own funeral video so I can have the last word. I bet that would shock a few folks, eh?
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