Inspirations from Above

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

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Shaun's Eulogy

All week long friends have truthfully noted that words fail to express adequately their condolences and words fail them as they try to offer comfort to our families in our sorrow. Indeed, words fail all of us in the face of such a tragedy. And yet I have been asked to say some words to friends and family gathered here this evening. Of course, I can’t begin to make comprehensible what has happened. Over the months and years, our pain will slowly ease and we will adapt to a world in which Shaun is no longer among us, but our lives are forever changed. As my daughter and Shaun’s family gradually learn to get on with their lives, they and we will always keep some intangible part of Shaun with us. I hope it will be his exuberance for life, his belief expressed in actions—not words—that “life is precious”—that spirit will and really must stay with us.

We only knew Shaun some three and a half years, and it was probably only about a year and a half that we knew him fairly well, yet in that short time he made such a positive impression on us and we grew to love him. Let me try to put in words what it was: Above all else, he made our daughter very happy. We are lucky that Julia turned out to be so loving, sensible, intelligent and sweet, and to see a young man smite her the way that Shaun did made us certain that there was something very special about him before we even got to know him that well. Early on Julia would tell me that Shaun was coming over for dinner and that wouldn’t I please make an effort to have a conversation with him and to get to know him. She realized this is not necessarily a guy thing and not something I in particular am very good at. I don’t think I usually did get those conversations going that Julia wanted, but Shaun and I grew to know each other in spite of my poor conversational abilities and we did so at our own pace and in our own way.

So Elba and David and I loved Shaun because of how happy he made Julia. But we also grew to love him for the kind of young man he was—for his positive outlook on life, for his willingness to drop everything he wanted to do to spend several hours or even a couple of days helping any one of us with some project of ours. He was happy and nearly always smiling. As far as I can tell, he did not judge people but instead surrounded himself with people he valued and enjoyed. He was an excellent student and full of intellectual curiosity. He was eager to learn about anything that interested his friends and family. He worked to understand things. He treated all of us with deep respect and we came to see that he not only treated his family with respect and attention but was looked up to by family members of all ages because he was so sensible, caring, encouraging and positive. Julia liked to say that a woman can know how a man will treat his wife by the way he treats his mother, and Julia saw an extremely strong bond of love and respect between Shaun and Cindy. We have always tried to inculcate in our kids the importance of strong family ties and were happy to see that Shaun was raised the same way.

So we grew to love him and we enjoyed Julia and Shaun sharing with us some of their plans and dreams. That is maybe the hardest part of all of this—the dreams unrealized. But let’s not be overly burdened right now with our grief. Let’s take some lessons from Shaun’s life so short but so well lived. “Life is precious” should have been his motto, though, as I said before, it was a motto he lived rather than simply spoke. Remember how words fail us and how they are not as important as our actions?

We can learn a lot from how Shaun lived and I want to put a positive note on this. A eulogy, after all, is supposed to be celebratory and not mournful. Here are some things Shaun would want us to do and I beseech all of you to take these words to heart. Shaun lived his life well and we could all be better in some ways by following his example:

· Be fit, work out, eat healthy, take care of your body.
· Be generous with your time. Be helpful in any way you can.
· Be curious and intellectually active. Work to figure things out and to question things.
· Enjoy life, have fun.
· Be outdoors as much as possible, enjoy and cherish nature.
· Love animals and plants for they add much to our lives.
· Be creative and productive, make things for yourself and others.
· Be honest, tell people what you think—never to hurt them but only to encourage them.
· Honor your parents and your spouse.
· Always have time for your friends and family, cherish them and keep them close.
· Don’t waste time numbing your mind or worrying about trivial things.
· “Life is precious.”

We come back to this simple statement of fact, the overwhelming truth of which was so poignantly driven home by an errant gunshot. “Life is precious.” Shaun would say to all of us, “Stop moping around. Enough crying already. Remember me but get busy with life.”

Those are the things I’m going to remember and the way I’m going to try to improve my own life. I’m the old professor, but Shaun was the master teacher. Honor his memory by living life as he lived it.

Written by: Father-in-Law, Ron Lippi, 11/29/2007

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

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