This weekend, there are three funerals for three fine ladies who made the world a brighter place with their presence.

They all lived long and full lives, if you think 77, 81, and 87 years on this earth are enough to make a difference.

I went to one of the funerals yesterday. Car tags from Michigan, Indiana, Florida, and Arkansas lined the parking lot of the church. As I entered the sanctuary, I noticed the hats: red felt hats, straw hats with broad brims, and sparkly hats stitched with red, white, and blue sequins. Which ones had belonged to their mother? She was known for her hats, and she wore them proudly to church, one of the last of a generation for whom the wearing of a hat meant more than just keeping the sun off your face. 

I noticed the chatter. This was not the usual somber gathering. The family filled most of the center section of the church, and they were talking. Some were smiling. So fitting. It was just like their mother, the one they had gathered to remember.

I’m a little surprised she didn’t give her own eulogy from the pulpit, for all the times she stood in church giving her own testimony, or telling about the next ladies’ activity, or giving a missions report. She was never one without words, and she always meant what she said.

When she was a girl, she had determined to live her life away from “taverns,” as she called them. She would be in church and raise her family in church. She married young, had a house full of children, and then adopted other relatives’ children when hard times came.

Her family bloomed. She had five children, 23 grandchildren, 39 great-grandchildren, and 2 great-great grandchildren, one of whom ran up the aisle, squealing with delight, while his mother picked him up and took him outside for the rest of the service.

She and her husband worked, retired, moved to my hometown, and joined the church.

But if you really want to know the kind of lady she was, she had funeral favors – more than just the typical printed program with a dove or praying hands. When her husband passed, three years ago now, guests received a plastic fishing worm along with a verse and an inspirational message.

I still have mine, even though I don’t know where it is. It was a six-inch watermelon seed Zoom worm. 

She had cookies, and she would have approved. She wouldn’t want anyone to leave hungry.

My husband and I left before we saw the family, who were making preparations to go to the cemetery, and who, by the end of the service, were readying themselves for the final goodbye. 

We had already said ours, in our minds, in our hearts, and in our memories. Her preacher’s final words: “Be like her.” 

I plan to go to the last funeral today, for I know the family. Another fine lady will be remembered for the good she did for her family and for her community. She bought her granddaughter her first clarinet for beginner band in the fifth grade. 

That granddaughter will finish a music education degree within the next year. 

What other stories will they tell? What other memories will they share?

I couldn’t go to the second funeral yesterday, as the time conflicted with the first, but I heard about it from someone else who had attended. The fine lady who had passed was a member of a family known for shape-note, convention-style singing, which is a tradition still valued in parts of the South. 

Her funeral had a choir filled with people who could sing, it was reported to me, their voices blending like the plucked strings of a harp. Both of the lady’s grandsons played the piano for the funeral. 

The lady herself had played at the annual singing at the church last September. I was there. She didn’t miss a note.

She had one son, who shared a story of his mother being told by a preacher that she couldn’t teach any more. I don’t know the details, but it had broken her heart.

It breaks mine too.

But it makes me wonder: when it’s my time, what stories will they tell about me? What will stand  out about my life that is worth sharing with those gathered to remember me?

Will they say that I gave it my all, in everything I did? Will they say that I lived out my faith? Will they talk about how I loved my family, beyond any words I could possibly use to express it? Will they even share the stories that tore my heart in two?

I hope so, because that’s what makes us real. That’s what makes us know that we’re not alone in our trials.

That’s what gives us hope.

But even more.

Pay attention, family and friends. 

I hope my funeral favor is a combination pack of a smoothly flowing blue writing pen and a cheap, one-subject, spiral-bound notebook. It will be like the first days of school all over again.

I don’t care if you don’t like to write. It’s not everyone’s thing. But you can always make a grocery list. You’ve gotta feed yourself and your family. 

If you’re feeling especially generous, you can write down the location of your favorite fishing holes or the ingredients of a famous family recipe, and give them to your grandchildren.

Let’s go on. You could write a thank you note. You could jot a letter to an old friend and slip it in the mail. 

Or that notebook could end up under a pile of old magazines and newspapers. You might not remember where you put it.

But I hope you remember that there was a woman who gave out treats at her funeral, who struggled and suffered, but still found reason for a glimmer of hope every day of her life.

Maybe you will say she, too, was one of the fine ladies.