How do you want to be remembered?

Yesterday during my Moving Forward with Jonathan Kuiper blogtalkradio show I decided to do a segment on how part of our journey to move on from grief and loss is to decide how we are to live. Part of this process is not changing who we are, but deciding what kind of person we embody after these events occur.

I contemplated this during our state cross country meet on Friday because my lasting memory of my team were the conversations before and after the race where we just enjoyed the banter, the company, and being present. This was in contrast to race time, when I was surrounded by lots of people with varying viewpoints as to how to be or act at a Cross Country meet.  From the coaches screaming at their runners, others chasing their runners in bicycles (which is cheating in some circles) to parents saying absurd things from “The girl in front of you doesn’t deserve her place,” or “Hurry up, I can do better than that,” it was surreal. From the hurtful comments to the unnecessary comparisons, Cross Country meets are supposed to be the more hug friendly of competitive athletics. Yet, I can list multiple examples of unloving behavior. I put that out there, because if those were the final moments of those people, how are they to be remembered?

Granted, we all have complex personalities and varying degrees of positive and negative interactions, but what if screaming at someone is what they remember us by? How does that help with people moving forward? In our grief, we are consumed by the loss of those around us, but likewise we need to emulate love and be love. By acting in a loving manner, it makes it easier for those who care about us to move forward when dealing with our loss. 

This really is a circle of life. We influence others as much as they influence us. While we trudge along this holiday season doing the best we can, while we mourn those we lost, take a moment and remember that in our grief we need to embody those loving traits of those we care for the most. Only then will the cycle be made easier, our memories happier, and our ability to move forward potentially quicker.