Funerals are a time of reflection.  They are a time to reflect on the person’s life that has ended, their families and friends as well as our own mortality.  The eulogy is usually filled with stories from the person’s life, a description of the type of person they were, sometimes their accomplishments are mentioned, the various community and civic groups they belonged to, etc.  And at the end, there is usually a graveside service where the person is carried to their final resting place, where later a headstone is placed to mark it.  No matter what we do in our lives, we are all moving towards that same end; there is no getting around it and none of us are immune to it.  But, the quality of life that we have led, the lives that we have impacted along the way, and the manner in which we have conducted ourselves will make the difference between living and just having passed through this life.

When our day comes, it doesn’t really matter how much money we made or what position or title we held in our jobs or what kind of car we drove or how big our house was.  At the end of the day, what matters was how we made others feel, how we helped others with no thought of how we would be repaid, and in what way we made the world a better place than it was when we arrived. How sad would it be to walk through a cemetery and see a headstone that read, “Here lies John, the CEO of his company, a millionaire, drove a Rolls Royce, and lived in a mansion”?  I don’t know about you, but that would make me think John seemed like a pretty empty individual.  You are the author of your story—the beginning, middle and ending.  Everything about your story is yours.  If you could write your headstone, how would it read? What actions are you taking to make it a true story?