I spent the day after Thanksgiving burying a loved one.  During the past three months, I have attended four funerals and four times I have been “forced” or “privileged” to look at the eventual finality of this earthly sojourn and to put this whole human experience into perspective.  Interestingly, there has been at least one preeminent and recurring lesson through them all: in the end, all that there is, all that matters, is love! [Note: Thing 1(Laylah)- in the picture below is the three-year-old daughter of my nephew who died last week,  Thing 2-(French Pope IV is my grandson.]

How Many Lives Do You Touch?

Love is the glue that connects hearts in this life and in the next.  In the end, no one cares how much money you had or didn’t have, what degrees you had or did not have, what jobs you lost or found, where you lived, what you wore, or what you drove, none of that really matters.  No one cares how much “stuff” you have; because in the end, no one attaches a U-Haul to a hearse.  Love is all that you take with you.  The one with the biggest heart wins!  And, in the end life asks a different set of questions: “How many lives did you touch?” How much love did you give?  How much did you care?  And more importantly, how successful were you in letting people know how much you cared about them?

Don’t Wait to Show You Care

Why do we wait to let people know how much they mean to us until it is too late?  In the funeral service held for Mrs. Frances Barnes two months prior, the choir sang a song that left a lasting impression on me.  The lyrics, “Give me flowers while I can still see them; say kind words to me while I can still hear them,” still ring in my ears because of their profundity.  I learned similarly profound lessons from the lives or deaths of  Lil Larry, Mrs. Frances Coley, and Mrs. Jacquelyn Lefton.  Reflecting on ‘what we remember’ when a loved one passes on offers important lessons for this life and how we should live.  We don’t control our entrants or exits, or when we take our first and last breath. So it would behoove us to get our houses in order.   What will people remember about you?  What will you take with you?

I’m Barbara Talley, The Poet who speaks and inspires.   To find more about me, visit:  www.thepoetspeaks.com