This is not the End

This is something I wrote for a relative and his immediate family during his last days. I read it to him and his family in the hospital, not long before his human self passed away. Then I read it again in the church during his funeral service, as part of a eulogy. The words were well received and I wanted to share them here.

This is not the end. You will continue on. Your body has served its purpose for this lifetime. It has shared, expressed, created and taken every breath. When your last breath is exhaled, the essence of who you are will live on. Everyone you ever knew and loved will take a piece of you with them. They will all remember you for different reasons. Some you barely knew and others who shared a lifetime of every emotion with you. Perhaps the most important desire as we reach our end is to not be forgotten. Because memories, good or bad, are a testament to a fulfilling life. We leave those memories with the ones we love and take them with us for eternity. You see, who you are is not defined by what you learned or what you did to earn a living. You are who you are before birth. You come into this world with only one thing. Love. How you choose to express and share that love is the essence of your true self. Because you ARE love. Everything else is just part of the human existence. Love cannot be taught or learned. It can only be disguised or hidden to satisfy a human agenda. Love is always inside you because it is the energy of your existence beyond this body. Those who understand, can feel the energy of the loved ones who have passed on from this life. That is the way it was meant to be. We will all feel your energy in different ways after you have said your last goodbye. The loving energy of your existence will keep its place, surrounding those of us you leave behind, whether or not we believe. The answer to the age old question is that we don’t really GO anywhere, because we have always been here and will always remain. Your place here will be just beyond the human senses but within reach of those who know that our existence is not limited to those senses. Those who truly know and understand will realize this is not the end.