My wife's college professor had a strange assignment for his class. They were to write their own eulogy. We both felt this was kind of a strange request, and so I volunteered to write it for her. This is what I came up with:
Throughout the course of history there have been a handful of “world shakers” whose impact on society, significant and immeasurable, has forever changed the face of western civilization. Akhenaton, originator of the first monotheistic religion---Alexander the Great, whose valor and courage in battle brought victory and conquest to the Macedonians--- Socrates, Plato & Aristotle, whose brilliant minds and inspired thoughts forever changed the worldview of millions---Martin Luther, whose Ninety-Five Theses nailed to the Wittenberg Door forever divided Christ’s Church into two factions---Abraham Lincoln, the Great Emancipator, the champion of the oppressed---
Each and every person on that short list has proven themselves to be amongst the bright and shining stars in the vast heavens of humanity, The passing of these legends into the vast mysteries of the afterlife was met with inconsolable grief and the kind of sincere mourning that has been known to shroud entire societies in a dark cloak of national depression.
They live on, in perpetuity, in the collective mythologies of every culture under the sun. History books, in addition to a thriving oral tradition, will ensure that their names and their deeds will live on until the end of time (or until mankind annihilates itself, whichever comes first).
These are the heroes of each and every generation to spring up in their wake. Only a small, tenuous step away from being named “idols”. The temptation to elevate them to the level of godhood is tempered only by the fact that they, like all men, eventually succumbed to the selfish greed of mortality.
On this day, November 15, 2007 in the year of our Lord, another name has been added to that prestigious list. Another life book-ended with accomplishments both private and public, to be placed on a pedestal for the admiration and imitation of the entire population of the planet. Here was a soul that knew no beginning and no end, only the conscious thriving desire to be a “world-changer” in the most lofty sense of the word. To live in the moment---that was her goal---to somehow guide that moment to a positive and fruitful end. She instinctively comprehended the hard lessons of the past. She prophetically divined the course of a future she insisted was worth living for…and dying for. But it was within the transcendental “present”, firmly ensconced between the horns of the MOMENT, that she made her dwelling.
If forced, against fervent protestations, to describe her in only one word, that word would be LADYBUG.
For beneath her regal exterior, under the surface of her monumental status as a reformer of the collective consciousness, Stacie Casey had a passion for ladybugs.
On the walls of her house hung artistically rendered paintings of the pesky insect. On her countertops and tables, scattered amongst the books she so dearly loved, were finely crafted figurines that could be mistaken for nothing else but ladybugs. On the tank of her the toilet in her bathroom, that bright and shiny chamber housing her porcelain throne, was a stuffed lady bug rendered, with a human face all too real in it’s bizarre glory, to resemble a sleeping baby.
Many of her acquaintances tell of how Mrs. Casey’s obsession with ladybugs fueled a passion that overflowed into the streams of her remarkable genius and her penetrating insights into the eternal questions of the ages.
But her husband guarded a secret that she begged him never to share until the day---this sad day---of her passing.
It seems that Stacie Casey, hero to men and women across the shores of the seven continents, was firmly and unswervingly convinced that one particular ladybug was actually speaking to her, offering Oprah-style advice on every subject from psychology to physics, from mathematics to taxidermy, from Jungian symbolism to cooking and cleaning (by the way, her husband tells me that the ladybug, though it may have expanded Stacie’s base of knowledge, was completely inept in the instruction of home economics).
She even claimed that this ladybug had a name, which it had been unwilling to divulge to her until the flame of a butane lighter was applied to its hind quarters. At the point where the searing heat became unbearable the lady bug confessed that its name was Sparky.
Stacie Casey kept Sparky in her shirt pocket at all times. Wherever she went she was accompanied by this lovable harlequin patterned insect. She once confided to her husband that it was this brightly colored beetle that was responsible for each and every word of wisdom that she ever spoke. Sparky, she said, had been the sole inspiration for every monumental deed and compassionate act of benevolence that she ever performed.
And so we are gathered her today over the grave of this vaunted woman, taken from us tragically at the age of 37 as a result of an accident involving wet pavement and a Caterpillar bull dozer. And it is not enough to shed our tears for the enormous soul that the Lord has called back home to illuminate and instruct His Holy angels, but we must also pay tribute to another, smaller yet no less significant soul, Stacie’s mentor, Sparky.
Now, before this service ends and we all return to the family’s house to gorge ourselves on turkey, dressing and numerous vegetables, I have been asked by Mr. Casey to play this excerpt from a tape he had secretly made on a day when his wife had been involved in particularly heated discussion with Sparky. He does this, he claims, so that all here will know the truth, that he is not telling lies to make her look like a crazed goofball at her funeral (as she expected he would). He does, however, wish to remind the congregation that Sparky, though as real a ladybug as ever flew into a fire to burn to a cinder, had a voice that only Stacie could hear, so the conversation on the tape is, as would be expected, somewhat one-sided.
So, without further ado, I will play the tape.
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“What do you mean? You want me to write my own funeral sermon? What makes you think I’m going to die any time soon? Even if I were to die tomorrow I wouldn’t know what to say. Those remembrances and recollections are for others to offer, for those who viewed my days from a point-of-view untainted by my own opinions and biases, unsullied by my self-esteem and self-image, which would surely make me out to be something more or less than I actually was.
“What’s that, Sparky? You say I’m going to HAVE to write it because it will be an assignment for one of my college courses? What kind of twisted mind would expect a woman in the prime of her youth to sit down and eulogize herself? It’s sick, I tell you. It’s in terribly bad taste. I won’t do it! I can’t! I’ll have to take a failing grade. It depresses me to even think about it.
“What’s that Sparky? You say it doesn’t have to be a lengthy affair? You mean I can write it as long or as short as I want? I don’t know. I still think I’ll pass. No doubt it will bring me bad luck to write it. It could very well jinx me.
“Okay, fine. Cool it with your cruel threats. It hurts me so when you get hateful with me. Okay, I’ll do it.”
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I want to thank you folks for coming to my funeral. I hope it didn’t ruin your day. Don’t feel obligated to attend the graveside service. I won’t hold it against you. I never liked riding in those long funeral trains myself.
Thanks for everything. I’ll see you on the other side.
Bye-bye.
