Thank You for Being the Best that You Are

I was at another funeral today. That’s two in one week!! Add that to the post of finding myself in the obituaries and I’m seeing a theme here. Not good.

In any event, the funeral today was for a man who may have been a difficult, demanding, and capricious person in life. I never knew him, so I don’t know for sure. His daughter, who is a friend of mine, gave an eloquent and truthful eulogy of her father. Some parts love, some parts frustration, some part loss, some parts laughter, some parts goodbye for what she had – and for what she didn’t have – in a father.

She did an amazing job of honouring the person her father was, while respecting the things in life that her father wasn’t. In doing so, she explained to us who her father was, and who he wasn’t. All the while though – and this is touching and telling – she called him “My Dad”. In Capital Letters.

After listening to her, I was struck by what the Chaplain said. It was almost as if he knew that the person we were there to honour was not perfect. (Who is???) “We are here to thank you for the best that you were”. He didn’t say that “We are here to thank you because you were the best”. Instead, we honour the “best that you were”.

I was struck by that because I hope and I think, listening to my friend being generous with her love for “MY DAD”, that my friend’s father did the best he could do. We can’t meet everyone’s expectations of how we should be. We can only do the best with what we have.

The Chaplain asked us to spend a moment in silence to remember the man who had passed beyond this life to whatever greets him now in his next life. I didn’t know the man so I didn’t have anything to remember. For those sixty seconds though, I kept repeating “Please know that your daughter loved you, not because you were the best, but because you were the best that you were”.

I know that. Because she talks about you in capital letters.


Rest in Peace knowing that too.