My Turn: Family, friends find joy in eulogizing

The first eulogy I remember was for my great-aunt. The clergyman quickly and efficiently summed up her life, interweaving a short message of salvation with a two-sentence resume, extolling this “woman of valor” whose worth was far beyond rubies. I was impressed that my humorless, short-tempered Aunt Rose possessed such goodness until I recognized his words (King Solomon’s praise of a God-fearing woman who constantly looked out for the good of her family) again and again at every woman’s funeral I attended during my Brooklyn childhood.

Decades later, I attended a funeral for the husband of a colleague. The evocative portrait drawn by his children and grandchildren brought me to tears. They told lovely stories that momentarily lessened the grief and bonded them with the audience. By drawing back the curtain through remembered small moments (like when their dad explained how he gave money to a beggar in the London underground), Bill’s essence was revealed and their enormous loss understood.

Whereas people once asked their pastor, rabbi or priest to preside, many families across the country are hard-pressed to name such a person. Instead, family and friends have taken the lead, using their time in the pulpit to talk more about this life than the afterlife. Moved to serve death in a more personal, poignant way, we’ve partnered with clergy, as we do with doctors, no longer ceding full authority.

Hearing dozens of tributes through the years has been a life-enhancing experience. What temperaments and images unfold in these brief chronicles! My friend Arthur’s father, Joe, when told he couldn’t cancel his safety deposit box after six months but was responsible for paying for the full year, calmly told the bank employee he was going to deposit the fish left over from the previous night’s dinner in his box; he walked out of the bank minutes later, owing nothing more.

I remember watching Lord Spencer’s heartbreaking portrait of his sister, a vulnerable Lady Diana, and Cher’s teary/ funny send-off to Sonny Bono. Their multidimensional portrayals were not obituaries; they were personal post-mortems, familiar and revelatory. They helped guide me when it was my time to speak at the end of a cherished relationship, to tell stories that were authentic and true, anecdotes to provoke a smile or a sigh. To share moments, unremarkable in life, that suddenly felt unique and irreplaceable.

Coming up with the stories that defined those I lost was surprisingly easy — and joyful. My friend Elliot’s definition of sharing an eggroll meant that he shoveled the vegetables onto your plate while keeping the crispy outside for himself. A neighbor of mine had a personality so charming, a couple he met for five minutes at a restaurant paid for his meal. And my Uncle Irving had a friend, a dental mechanic, who gifted him an old set of false teeth; Irving’s greatest pleasure in life was to take them to a restaurant — and drop them into an unsuspecting dinner companion’s soup.

Although we communicate hundreds of times a day at the speed of light, opportunities to honestly connect seem elusive. Emails have replaced thank-you notes; texts do the business of phone calls. Eulogies provide the occasion to be fully present. As more of us become a life’s storytellers, we home in not on the long days that quickly turned into short years, but on the uniquely wonderful expressions (“elbow grease” was my mother’s favorite) and behaviors (my mother-in-law’s fabled marble cake recipe bequeathed with an essential ingredient omitted) that tell all. No doubt our loved ones would be surprised to hear which small character-revealing incidents we chose to include in their life’s highlight reel. As we connect the dots of their lives, we remind ourselves that it’s the small moments that rule.

Marcia Byalick,

Searingtown