It’s strange hearing Mom’s eulogy exactly ten years after I gave it: through ears connected to the same brain that correctly assumed back then that life would never be the same.
I was 32-years-old when I gave that speech living paycheck-to-paycheck with my girlfriend in Austin, Texas and finally getting a little bit of traction in a career change into marketing.
Now, I’m married to that girlfriend with a house and family in Connecticut, hitting my mid-40s, and active with a national network of stay-at-home dads where I just spoke about finding poetry and whimsy in our shared lifestyle.
I couldn’t have predicted any of it, but it all seems to have made sense at the time.
I also never expected to hear the eulogy again after first sharing it.
I didn’t know the church audio system automatically recorded every time it was activated or that my Pastor would later offer me a copy.
It’s a true blessing that the audio exists both to set a bar for my children when they hopefully one day eulogize me, and to let them hear throughout their lives proof of the love and affection that existed between their Grandma and me, and hopefully feel the ways it’s radiated through the way I’ve raised them.
Or they’ll listen to it and bust my balls over something like being so old that I used floppy disks as a child.
I’d be fine either way. It’s just cool to have.
