I sit in the back pew, watching tearful children approach the podium. Their voices crack as they share stories of Sunday morning pancakes, bedtime stories that stretched past midnight, and the way their grandfather’s eyes lit up when they scored their first goal. They speak of unconditional love, of wisdom whispered in quiet moments, of a man who never missed a recital, never forgot a birthday, never failed to answer the phone when they needed him most.
The words hang in the air like incense—sacred, beautiful, and heartbreaking in their timing.
Where were these words last Tuesday when he sat alone, wondering if his life had mattered?
We gather in our finest clothes to honor the dead with testimonies we never gave the living. We fill sanctuaries with praise that could have filled ordinary days. We speak of love with a poetry that we somehow couldn’t summon over morning coffee or evening phone calls.
How many souls have left this world carrying the weight of unspoken appreciation? How many have closed their eyes for the final time, never knowing they were someone’s hero, someone’s safe harbor, someone’s reason to believe in goodness?
We hoard our deepest gratitudes like precious stones, saving them for marble headstones instead of living hearts. We craft elaborate eulogies for the departed while the breathing walk among us, starving for a single word of recognition.
The tragedy isn’t just that we’ve lost them—it’s that they never knew they were found.
Every funeral should haunt us with this question: What eulogy am I withholding from someone who can still hear it? What words of love am I saving for a day when tears will be my only audience?
The dead cannot be comforted by our praise, no matter how eloquent. But the living—the living can be transformed by it.
Stop waiting for the funeral. Deliver the eulogy now.