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What Attending Three Memorials Taught Me About Living a Purposeful Life
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In this solo episode, I share my recent reflections after attending three different memorials.
We often avoid going to funerals, memorials, or celebrations of life because we are afraid it will be too sad or that it will "bum us out". However, I want to share how these ceremonies can actually be incredibly inspiring and uplifting experiences centered around an immense amount of love.
I discuss the beautiful and unique ways these families chose to honor their loved ones, who all lived into their 80s. You will hear about a beautiful at-home memorial that perfectly captured a mother's sense of humor with prank plastic spiders and her favorite recipe cards. I also share the story of a gentleman whose eulogy highlighted his incredible journey of moving to the United States, learning new languages, and validating his studies to build a beautiful life.
Key Takeaways from this episode:
- Funerals are about love, not just sadness: While there is certainly grief, the core of a memorial is the immense love present for the person who passed.
- Personalization brings deep comfort: Honoring a loved one's specific quirks—like their love for cats, cultural food, or even playing pranks—helps attendees connect with their memory and share wonderful stories.
- Witnessing the end of a life can inspire the rest of yours: Hearing about these lives lived with such profound purpose deeply inspired me. Having just turned 50 myself, these memorials made me reflect on how I want to show up for my family and live my next 30 years with intentionality and presence.
I invite you to listen and perhaps reconsider any reluctance you might have about attending a funeral or memorial in the future. I would also love to hear about your own experiences and what you have learned from the memorials you have attended!
Contact me on my website: https://www.griefgratitudeandthegrayinbetween.com/ or on Instagram
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Transcript
Introduction to the podcast 'Grief, Gratitude, and the Gray-In-Between'
00:00:05
Speaker
Welcome to Grief, Gratitude, and the Gray-In-Between podcast. I'm your host, Kendra Rinaldi. This is a space to explore the full spectrum of grief, from the kind that comes with death to the kind that shows up in life's many transitions.
00:00:22
Speaker
Through stories and conversations, we remind each other that we're not alone. Your journey matters, and we're alone. And here we're figuring it out together. Let's dive right in to today's episode.
Personal grief experiences and recent events
00:00:37
Speaker
Hello, hello. So today it's doing a solo episode and I just wanted come on here so today it's doing a solo episode and i just wanted to come on here and chat a bit about what's going on in my life and the things that lately have brought up some grief. So in the last few weeks, I've actually
00:01:14
Speaker
experienced different situations in which grief has shown up that is not directly even to me, but to people around me.
Memorial highlights: Recipe cards and humor
00:01:33
Speaker
So a month ago, one of my friend's moms died. My mom her my friend's mom died. Here I'm like grammatically incorrect. And i got to attend a memorial in her honor, which was beautiful. And I loved how it how they did it like in their home, they had people be able to come in and stop by, and how it really showed so much of her mom's personality.
00:02:07
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and I knew her mom. um Well, i love I love her mom. And I still say it in the present moment because it's true. And I love how they were able to incorporate parts of her personality into the way that they
00:02:31
Speaker
that they had the memorial. She had a great sense of humor and she liked to play play pranks. So they had ah they had this bowl full of spiders and and cockroaches, like the plastic ones. And it had like a little sign that to grab some and to prank somebody that week in honor of her.
00:02:55
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And that was just so, I thought, so unique and so personal because again, it was also letting us know as those attending this memorial more about her.
00:03:10
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The other thing that they had too was ah a little like recipe card up with two of her favorite recipes, soup and ah ah a dessert, which I had actually the honor of trying them both. So I love that now i have this little keepsake in her honor.
00:03:32
Speaker
and remembering her. So, and along, and and inside their home, they had different things that really showed her personality and ah they had things that she liked. She loved cats. And so there were like lots of different things that she owned that had cats, things about their their culture, food that had exemplified their culture, their their background. a recipe book with all the tabs that of all the favorite recipes she had as well. Just, i I loved it. And in conversation, then as you're going around and kind of seeing this and interacting with other people that knew her, being able to share stories of these different things is just amazing.
Another memorial: Eulogy and life achievements
00:04:17
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And then I had ah ah ah like ah on the TV, just a
00:04:23
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a little video going on of all these different pictures of all the different adventures and times in her life with all the people that she loved. So I absolutely loved attending that memorial and really seeing the joy that she had brought to people's lives and continues to bring, ah and also just the way in which her family chose to honor her.
00:04:51
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The other and I attended another memorial more recently, and it was also, it was different. It was at a location. I went to the burial. I also went to the to the and memorial, and it was also beautiful. It was also, they read a whole um kind of eulogy, letting know about what this gentleman had achieved through his life, all his life, his upbringing in another country and the different moves and all the things he'd done, all the languages he had learned, having to move to this country, to the United States to then start all over again, including all the
00:05:38
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The studies that he had done, he had to validate in this country. And by the way, if I'm kind of stay saying ah saying kind of vague and not saying too much information is just again, to respect the privacy of these individuals since I'm just sharing my own perspectives. so It was just beautiful to listen to all this history and all this life that this person had gone through. right It was so inspiring. So even leaving that memorial with my husband, he who didn't know the gentleman as much, like was like, wow, I loved
Inspiration from a YouTube memorial
00:06:14
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that. I loved hearing everything that he'd done.
00:06:19
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Then i also got to watch on YouTube a memorial of another friend's up parent who had passed, his father, somebody's father. And the the the words that were share in that shared in that mass and of his, again, his character, his personality, the way that he was with others was also so inspiring.
00:06:53
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All of these people that I'm sharing are all people that were in their 80s.
00:07:01
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Those people that died that I'm sharing. Each one died of different, in very different circumstances. not all of them were of aging.
00:07:16
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And what i felt so inspired about was all of them really lived a life so full of love, of love of family ah of purpose.
Living a purposeful life
00:07:40
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a fam of It was a life lived with purpose.
00:07:45
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All of their lives of what I could hear by these different eulogies was really purpose. And you i mean, in these memorials. And it was so inspiring. You know, I turned 50 last year and This is what I hopefully have to look forward to in the next 30 years of li continuing to live a life full of purpose and of touching other people's lives, I hope impacting other people's lives in some shape or form, but particularly of being able to be present with the people that are in my life right now, my children, my husband,
00:08:36
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my brother my sister and my nieces and nephews, my sister-in-law, brother-in-laws.
00:08:47
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i I hope that
00:08:55
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I can live a life that is even slightly as full even as the different people that I got to witness what their lives were in their 80 plus years of life and how loved they were in their life.
Uplifting nature of memorials
00:09:20
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So why I wanted to come on and share this is because a lot of times, People don't go to funerals or don't go to memorials because you think it's going to be so sad.
00:09:39
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And honestly, lot of these are so inspiring. And really what you feel is just the amount of love that is there for this person that passed. Yes, of course there's sadness and grief, but really...
00:09:59
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really the the at the core of it is just this immense amount of love. And it can make you feel uplifted and and it can make you reflect even on your own life.
00:10:16
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And you can learn from that. You can learn so much from witnessing how others pay their respects to someone they love and when they've died.
00:10:31
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And i just want to kind of just say that and invite you to maybe not be so reluctant in attending a funeral or memorial, a celebration of life, if you ever have that opportunity And you may not take it because you might feel it's gonna quote unquote bum you out.
Lessons from memorials and listener invitations
00:11:09
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So that's what I've learned in the last, literally it's a month that I've been present at these three different memorials, one of them online and the other two.
00:11:25
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in person, but I learned a lot from other people's ways of celebrating the life of the person that they loved. So that's what I wanted to share with you today.
00:11:39
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And i would love to hear more about your own experiences and what you've learned and felt in different memorials or funerals as well.
00:11:55
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thank you again so much for choosing to listen today. I hope that you can take away a few nuggets from today's episode that can bring you comfort in your times of grief.
Encouragement for feedback and sharing
00:12:08
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If so, it would mean so much to me if you would rate and comment on this episode. And if you feel inspired in some way to share it with someone who may need to hear this, please do so.
00:12:24
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Also, if you or someone you know has a story story of grief and gratitude that should be shared so that others can be inspired as well, please reach out to me.
00:12:37
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And thanks once again for tuning in to Grief, Gratitude, and the Gray In Between podcast. Have a beautiful day.