The Posterboards of Pictures at Your Funeral.
What story will the posterboards of pictures tell at your funeral? I’ve come to embrace, rather than resist, attending funeral services. Many times, just being present can offer some comfort to the people grieving the loss of a loved one. I’ve learned that it helps me to empathize with the grieving process people are going through if I understand more about the life of their loved one who has just left this earth. That’s why the posterboards of pictures, and sometimes videos of pictures, at a funeral offer an opportunity to better understand a person’s life and how their life impacted the people that loved them.
As I look for the story of a person’s life that’s contained in the pictures, I try to imagine what their life was like through the different years they were here on this earth. There are typically pictures from their childhood, teen years, and a broad spectrum of their adult life. The pictures tend to include the most important moments in their life from each era including getting married, welcoming children into the world (sometimes grandchildren), birthdays, holiday celebrations, and vacations. They include the people that have been most important in their life including family members, friends, neighbors, and co-workers.
There are many life lessons I’ve acquired from those posterboards of pictures. The pictures indicate that when we leave this earth, we leave with the memories that brought us joy. Left behind are all the challenges, turmoil, and difficulties we had to face in our life. I’ve learned that the moments that bring people the most joy in life occur being in the presence of other people. It might be their parents, spouse, kids, grandkids, friends, people that they worked with, and more. Another lesson is that we can build positive character traits when we celebrate anything together. Might be achievements, birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, team wins, a home or vehicle purchase, or when a child learns to walk, talk, and ride a bike. Celebrations might include one person or hundreds. Throughout our life, the vastness of participants are unlimited when we celebrate something including family near and far, friends, and even acquaintances. They are all people that touch our life in some positive way.
Through the years, I’ve discovered a strong appreciation for eulogies that reflect the rest of the story that the posterboards of pictures described. A well-thought-out eulogy ties together the story of joy of a person’s life and what their life meant to others. The posterboards of pictures provides a timeline for the eulogist to follow and a guideline of what was important in the person’s life. All eulogies have great value and paint a positive picture of a person’s life, and I’ve come to divide them into two groups. People with some sort of faith leave this earth believing life is infinite. People without some sort of faith believe life is finite and has been completed with their death. There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of ways to pursue some type of faith in our current world. The observation I’ve made with the two groups relates more to the impact the difference faith, or lack thereof, has on the people attending the funeral as they exit and go back to living their lives. If nothing else, every form of faith provides hope.
When I began to write this article, my mind went to a true place of caring about you, the story of your life, and what the posterboards of pictures and eulogy will say at your funeral. Will they tell the story of your life exactly as you’d like it to be told? When you think about it, the person that has the greatest control over your story, as depicted by your posterboards of pictures and eulogy is YOU! What a wonderful gift that is. But have you embraced that gift? If you are the one who’s been given the gift of control, what are you doing today…and tomorrow…that will ensure that the story of your life is shared the way you’d like it to be shared? What will your life have meant to the people you love, and even to the rest of the world?
Every person’s life in this world matters. What makes each of us unique impacts every person we have some form of contact with. The beauty of the gift of life is that we have the most control over our own. My hope is that you’ll take some time to ponder what that can mean for the quality of life you experience on a daily basis. Think about each day representing a single picture of your life. Is today’s picture of your life one that you’d like to have included on the posterboards at your funeral? If so, awesome. If not, what will you change to make tomorrow’s picture one that will definitely be included? Remember, YOU are the one that has the greatest control over the story of your life. Begin right now making it the story you want it to be. Why? Because, Hey…I Believe In YOU! GiddyUp!