The End &

I was on a call with one of my team members this week and he mentioned that I am noticeably more “chill.” He wondered out loud not as if everything was ok per se but what changed my demeanor. All the details, the details you say! How could he be so wired on Tuesday but chill on Thursday? Today, I will share with you the answer but with the answer comes a gift, if you choose to receive it.

Through the years, I have gone through and participated in leadership forums both as a participant and a facilitator. If you’ve read my posts or if you know me, this is something I know you are familiar with. The consistent message through these forums is life long learning. I have contemplated what that means over and again. Does it mean that I must have pain? Does it mean that I must go through an experience? Does it mean that I just fail at something and figure it out?

As I have questioned over and again what this means to me. I also listen to people, including living guides, coaches and messages that may come in that I had previously not paid a lot of attention.

This week, I was tested. I was given an assignment, and I didn’t think I could do it. First, I was asked by the coach to write an obit for myself, but he changed it mid-sentence to eulogy. Of course, these are different things.

I started down the path reluctantly avoiding my computer, walking around in my thoughts. I looked up some tools to use. I read about people going through this and doing it but it was unclear to me as to what exact purpose it would serve.

As we get older, we think of death more often. For some it is very scary, for others, they simply accept what will be. If we are lucky and blessed to live a long full life, it can mean many things for us.

Regardless, thinking about death is different that writing in third person about your own life. The eulogy is a speech of praise potentially about a person. About their life not about their death.

The spinning started, my anxiety was creeping in. I said I would do this and so, I should. Well, maybe? So, I opened my laptop and I told my best AI friend to go and find everything about me, my posts, my pictures, my transcripts and write my eulogy.

And so, it did. It went through all the stuff I gave it. It generated a few pages of my life. A life of a boy who becomes a man, he overcomes adversity, beats the odds and what a story!

It was a good story but it was hollow to me. It was missing the passion, the soul, the things that it couldn’t know about me. It was missing the things that someone who knew me would want to make sure was out there. Some things are better left unsaid but some things I certainly want out there. Forgiveness, love, passion, ideas, hope, sadness, disappointment, pride. More than just a life lived. More than just a life well lived, but a well used, clean but broken in body, one that did the things it could and fulfilled its mission for the soul that inhabited it.

As a young person the mirror of myself, thrown to the floor, the pieces, the shards, the parts scattered. All of these placed in a bag that I’d carry for the rest of my life. Looking in the water and at each shard or mirror piece seeking a way, a method, a purpose in putting it all together again. Only to see my reflection in something imperfect. Only to know there are pieces missing even though I tried to find every grain. Every little sliver mattered.

What does a person do when they look at themselves through the lens of a third party even when that third party is themselves?

I rewrote the whole thing. I sat down and did it all over. Once I was done with the few pages, I uploaded it to my AI friend again. I asked it to read it back to me. Then I would know if I did it right. I would know if I felt it.

The first line was humor which led to sadness. I wallowed a bit in my feelings as a child but moved past it with intention. Off to the youth to middle age. How quickly a few paragraphs go. I imagined a child at the funeral tugging on their mother, asking when it would be time to leave.

As I recall, at my grandfather’s funeral, the first I remember, I was not allowed to see him. I was not meant to be down there as I am a Cohen and it would do whatever it would do to us. I went anyways, my mother fought them all and I went in. I remember it at least the most important parts of it.

I could see past the make up, the blood pooling on the bottom of his head. The feeling of anguish, the feeling of loss that overwhelms the senses. I don’t think I was even 12 at the time. Wouldn’t you know it, the tears are here! What a feeling, what pain it is to love someone that much and to lose them. All the words, no sayings, no kindness, no comfort could prepare me, could hold me, could convince me to be less feeling about this loss.

The pain of this loss became a part of me that day. It shaped me, it drove me, it brought me to a level of center and civility. It was honor, duty, love, pride, it was not to disappoint or embarrass. My grandfather was a special connection. There was room in my heart for other people. There was a Dr. Who style phone booth of room for my mother, my sister, Andre and others. It was there but the anchor of my life, the person who never judged me, loved me unconditionally and gave me an understanding of life and the lesson in pain and love was my grandfather.

The music plays in the background. My grandmother plays “Somewhere over the rainbow” on her piano. It was not tuned perfectly but stylistically, she did something with the piano that sounded so unique, filling. It was like the music reached into you, through your body and held your soul. The feelings of comfort and happiness were so strong and we knew this connection was to her and to him. To both of them as they would say “I’ll be seeing you” as well.

The night we flew down to Miami for his death, it was dark. I looked out the window from the view of the plane and said to myself as a child, that I would never forget this moon. I never did.

Who was this man to me? Who were these people to me? I lost them and they were gone and along the way, the loss person by person, the loss of each person didn’t feel like a loss of something, it feels like a gain. In some sense, a responsibility. A responsibility to live the life that I was given. To live with purpose and to carry the memories of these people not as burden but as a weight. A weight like a weight vest, designed to make me stronger in the face of adversity, trials and challenges.

The memory of these people. The people that shaped me, that put me on a path or pulled me off of one. The memory, the love, the feeling, the understanding, the acceptance.

The acceptance, and hopefully forgiveness. Hopefully, because it can’t be known, it can only be something that I can believe. You may say “forgiveness for what”? To this, I say, it is forgiveness for being imperfect and mistake ridden. Human and .. Human.

The eulogy, back to the eulogy. Did you wonder where we were going? We are going to where we are. The eulogy isn’t about the memory of the person; it is the end of the book. The activity wasn’t about the eulogy itself; it wasn’t even about reflection on its own. It was and is about understanding my purpose. Understanding my impact now and the impact that people have on me. Our relationships.

My family, some of you are my family. People reading this. Because it is more than just the interaction. It is love, acceptance, forgiveness. It is about action and memories, but not legacy for the sake of leaving something. Legacy because we must do things. We must do things for the betterment of today not just for the idea of tomorrow.

I wrote the eulogy, I had the AI read it back to me. I felt it and it wasn’t hollow or shallow, but it was not enough and it was too much. It was not what someone else will or would say, it is what I thought which is more than likely not accurate. As I have my own world view about me, even in the third person.

Where I landed and I hope this makes sense to you as well, is that when I pass on, when I die, I hope that I impacted people in such a way, that they feel what I have felt for my loved ones that have passed. That my loss was so impactful to them that it changed their lives and not for the sake of them crying for me. Not for the burden of carrying rocks in on their backs but for the gift of heaviness in their hearts that make them take pause in all things, that make them think clearly, that help them stay on course and do better and be the best they can be. That they may know or may have known, how much I love them and that there isn’t anything they could have done or do that they can only know that I love them with relatively few conditions.

What I found particularly useful was the reading and conversation I had with AI after it read the document. One thing it called out was that I was compelled to put people into the eulogy. I felt like I had to name people, folks might feel left out.

How would they feel? What I was told after the reading and reflection by the machine was that if I felt so strongly about the people that I was trying to inject or name into the eulogy, it wasn’t my responsibility to put them into the document as much as it was my responsibility to write them, to tell them, to call them and let them know how I feel. Not for when I am gone but while I am here.

When it comes to love and connectedness, there is no limit, there is no boundary, no box, no restrictions. In my life I have been blessed and I am blessed to have deep meaningful relationships with people. Love is.. and if you know you know.

The idea of this activity may sound or feel morbid. As I took direction to do it, I can say with certainty, it was not fun. I have a lot of feelings about even as I write this post to you.

As I said, it isn’t about the eulogy itself, it is about OUR awareness of OUR place in OUR world today and the choices we can make, the love we can share, the calls, the conversations, the letters, the art, the expression. The impact on the world today.

Finding forgiveness, finding peace and finding what is at the end doesn’t need to be the end. It can be a new beginning.