Eulogy is my Word of the Week

In case you don’t know, a eulogy is a speech given at a funeral or memorial service to honor the life of a person who passed away. “Eulogy” comes from the Greek word eulogia, which means “praise.” Ever since my sister Jackie’s death on November 8, I have agreed to give the Eulogy for her funeral. It would mean going back in my mind to our childhood and bringing up memories of how she was. So for the past several weeks, the responsibility has been weighing heavily on me.

At night when I wake up, it was so hard to fall back asleep as I would be thinking about what I should include about her and what I should leave out. I’m mindful that my sister was a very private person and wouldn’t want certain details ‘out there’. She also wouldn’t want any praises lavished on her. But it’s customary when someone dies for certain things to happen and this is just one of them.

This week Leisa spent some time going through all of our photo albums to see if we could find any photos of her. I’m sure we did have photos as kids but somehow those have been lost, for many years. The only good photo we found of her was when she was in high school. It’s a black-and-white photo which captured her very well. This is how we remember her as a teenager growing up. Looking at old photos is a good way to remember some of the little details that we sometimes overlook.

She changed a lot over the years in terms of her complexion and also her features. I had to point this out in the eulogy as well, when I finally sat down and wrote it. It took me most of today (Sunday) and I did get some help from Leisa in filling in some little gaps. Some of the names of people who were significant in our lives have eluded me but I hope to be reminded of them by the time we get to Jamaica for the funeral in a few days.

It was very emotional putting words to paper and especially referring to her in the past tense. Sometimes if feels so surreal as if I am just having a dream and will wake up soon.

Not only have I written the eulogy, but it will also be my job to read it at the funeral service. Help me to pray for strength to do it justice. I am not nervous… well, not very. And I am also hoping that there won’t be much crying as that can easily set me off. I’ve decided to handwrite it and so far I’ve used 9 sheets of lined paper (A4 size). I prefer not having to rely on a typed script, but rather on my own handwriting. In order for it to go smoothly, I’ve only written on one side of the paper, I’ve numbered the pages, and I hope I remember to have a pair of reading glasses with me.

I think that now that I’ve written it, I will sleep better and be able to practice before the big day of December 21, which happens to be the day before my birthday. Jackie’s birthday would have been 10 days after her funeral.

It’s done now, and I feel much better for getting through it. Fingers crossed for everything to go well. Now you all know why we have been missing in action on the blog and the vlog for just over a month now. Hopefully, we will soon be back to a more regular schedule.

We are linking with Anne who blogs at Raisiebay.com