Eulogy

funny how we get to know a person better after he/she passes on?

i attend wakes and funerals, and usually come away from these sombre events somehow knowing the deceased better and wishing that the knowledge had come when he/she was still alive.

we, as a nation, mourn the passing of our ex-president. As a kid, I knew him as the friendly waving figure on TV during national day parades. i liked him. now, after many reports of him in the media in honour of him, i think i got to know him better. and i like him better.

The same goes for the late Pope, Princess Diana, Mother Theresa, my grandfathers...

Funny how reflective and ponderous people become when we are reminded of our imminent fate. no matter if it's the 'commoner's grave', state cemetery or honoured in Yasukuni (where Jap national heroes lay.), one's still... dead.

what do those who are left behind say?

from The Book of Eulogies (1997) by Phyllis Theroux, here are some excerpts:

US President ABRAHAM LINCOLN (1809 - 1865) by the freed black slave Frederick Douglass (1817 - 1895)
"He did not hesitate, he did not falter... he calmly and bravely heard all the voices of doubt and fear all around him, but he had an oath in heaven, and there was not enough power on the earth to make this honest boatman, backwoodsman and broad-handed splitter of rails evade or violate that sacred oath."

Huckleberry Finn author MARK TWAIN (1835 - 1910) by the blind, deaf and dumb scholar Helen Keller (1880 - 1968)
"He never embarrased me by saying how terrible it is not to see, or how dull life must be, lived always in the dark...
He would often say: 'Helen, the world is full of unseeing eyes, vacant, staring, soulless eyes.'
He never made me feel that my opinions were worthless, as so many people do... He kept me always in mind while he talked, and he treated me like a competent human being. that is why i loved him."