As I sat and listened to people share their fond memories, as I looked at the sea of individuals seated in rows for the service and remembered the overwhelming flow of people coming to pay their respects at the visitation the night before, I couldn’t help but think, “despite her flaws, what an amazing person – look at the lives she impacted, the great diversity of people she has brought together to say goodbye.”

Through the sadness, it was hard not to be just a little cheerful, maybe even a little hopeful, that somehow her legacy was living on in the people she impacted.  I couldn’t help but smile with a little pride through the tears.

Nobody escapes death.  It is part of the human condition.  But it is in that realization we can discover true meaning in our lives.  We can aspire to live a life of meaning in which we transcend our human tendency towards selfishness to truly connect with and possibly help another person.

It is for these moments a person is remembered.

I can’t put it much better than Frankl himself:

“We have rescued it into the past wherein it has been safely delivered and deposited. In the past, nothing is irretrievably lost, but rather, on the contrary, everything is irrevocably stored and treasured. To be sure, people tend to see only the stubble fields of transitoriness but overlook and forget the full granaries of the past into which they have brought the harvest of their lives: the deeds done, the loves loved, and last but not least, the sufferings they have gone through with courage and dignity. From this one may see that there is no reason to pity old people. Instead, young people should envy them. It is true that the old have no opportunities, no possibilities in the future. But they have more than that. Instead of possibilities in the future, they have realities in the past—the potentialities they have actualized, the meanings they have fulfilled, the values they have realized—and nothing and nobody can ever remove these assets from the past.”