Eulogy: Remembering a Funeral by Christina Osborn

I prefer to have my own words read because that’s the only way I can imagine myself represented. I’ve been writing for years and I swear to you I wrote until the strength in my hands failed. I don’t know why. Maybe I had a lot to say that I could never convince anyone to sit down and listen to. Maybe it’s yet another symptom of my many-layered neurosis. Maybe it will do someone good someday. This is all I can hope for.

The most beautiful funeral I ever attended was in the convention room of a community center. There were no flowers on the walls. There was no casket. John had been buried earlier that week up in Idaho on family land. But he was there, and perhaps his presence was made stronger by the lack of any actual physical evidence of his body. It was like we were all waiting for our bright, beautiful young friend to leap out of the next room and tell us it had been a cruel and complicated practical joke.

As each friend, most of them middle-aged men, broke down at the microphone, each spoke almost exactly the same words. How reliable, how crazy, how strong, how handsome, how drunk John had been; was, for he was there with us, holding each of us, whispering in our ears in his rumble of a voice. Each of the two hundred people in that room were suffering together. I loved every person in that room, most of whom I had never met. I loved them because John loved them and they loved John and he was so strong, so there in every moment of his life, that his love was etched in each of us. We had been marked by this incredible human being and to be marked was to be part of a family.

When I meet the eyes of someone who was there that day, I know we’re thinking about the same thing.

I left the Springdale Community Center that day with one wish: that if I achieved nothing else in my life that I should be loved like that by the people I left behind. The only way I know to do that is to find the best way to love each person I am given. Each person I have ever loved has been a gift to me, has changed me, has made me examine myself and try to be a better person. I dreamed of perfection and sainthood when I was a young woman, and now I dream only of the arms of those who have held me. I love you, every one.