LeeMobile

Today I attended Chelsy’s funeral. It was the first funeral I’ve ever attended, but I think the service was exceptionally beautiful. It was directed more towards celebrating her life than mourning our loss. I had failed to realize the extend of how active she was her pursuits to “save the world”. Also, there were many that showed up for her service. She was so vibrant, charismatic, and warm to be around that it wasn’t surprising to see how many friends she had.

It was uplifting to reflect on her life there, because she did what she believed to be right even if it wasn’t easy or practical. Debating with her is hard, because a lot of the time you know deep down she’s right and that I rationalize a lot of cop-outs. There is a point in our morality when we feed ourselves lies, or morsels of denial, to rationalize our actions, and she really had very few of those points. Going to the service really helped me realize that I do this quite a lot, and though it is “practical” and done often, it doesn’t make it right.

I know I’ve always had ideas of stepping away from my career and working to help others, and I think today helped me revisit those ideas. I can’t drop everything right now, but I’m gonna steer myself more in that direction. I mean, really… writing computer code will help pay the bills but it won’t really make a difference that I value. She had the courage to do what she was passionate about, maybe I’ll find that someday too.

She was brilliant at a lot of things, and writing was one her many talents. She wrote this for her high school graduation, entitled “A Farewell”, and I think it is really fitting:

“I say farewell for the final time. Final… how abstract, how surreal that concept is to grasp. How can I imagine an end to all of this? It comes too soon, it comes too fast. How odd it seems to say goodbye, to so many people, so many experiences in but one single moment. How strange it is to sum up all of the emotions I feel at this instant with one single word. To give each memory of reminiscence and appreciation it deserves would take too much time, prolong the inevitable – but perhaps that is the point. If a farewell encompasses every treasured memory, every amusing conversation, every feeling of love and pain and regret and healing, perhaps they wouldn’t be as painful as they are. For it is what the ‘farewell’ is lacking, what it fails to express, that is the most painful and aggravating thing, at least to me. I do not look forward to ‘farewell’s’, for I always know that there will be something left unsaid, that there will be emotions and thoughts that will never be revealed because of the feeling of awkwardness that always accompanies the telling of deep emotions. And so I’ll bid you all a farewell, and hope that through some mysterious way, you’ll all understand the way I feel towards each of you, and hear the words I’d meant to say.”

-Chelsy Shillington, 2000

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 19th, 2006 at 8:30 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.