Latest / Just For Today / 96. Grief and Remembrance
Transcript
- Jessica Figueroa: Good morning. I'm not sure what time of day you listen to, but I'm gonna keep encouraging you to get this podcast listened to within the first hour of your day. So that way it gives your mind time to think on it all day long. So I want to share with you a story that was so inspiring to me the other day. I was driving along I 95 northbound. I 95 is our interstate here in South Florida, and there was a man on the overpass and Hanging this huge sign over the overpass. So everyone driving northbound on 95 could read this in this area. And it was huge. It had to have been, I don't know, 10, 12 feet long. And it said, I miss you with the name of a person and then their birth and death dates. And the person had passed away about six years prior to that. And he was just sitting up there with his sign. It was already there. And he had already like positioned it so it was secure. And he was just sitting there. And I thought how special that was that this man was grieving still the loss of this person in his life, and I don't know who it was. But this grand display of affection towards this person, I don't know how long he was there. I just passed him in a couple seconds, as much as you can see and going 80 miles an hour. But I thought, huh, you know, grief is a funny thing, and grief needs to be processed, and we can't. Quantify somebody else's grief or our own? It is a process. And some people might need, and some relationships might need a lifetime of you grieving it. Others might just need a short period of time. And I was so impressed that this gentleman knew that he needed to do this on this day. That is part of his grief process. And then I thought, how often are we not grieving the people that have already passed in our lives? It could have been a grandparent that we lost when we were 10 years old and we don't even realize it. And maybe we need to honor them on their birthday. Maybe we need to ask when their birthday is. Maybe we don't, we didn't even really know. And we need to spend a birthday dinner honoring that person that's no longer with us. So today's exercise is to think about the people that we know and love. And even if we never met them, we could still have known and loved them. And what can we do to honor their life? You don't have to do a grand display on an overpass on a highway. Maybe it's a little dinner. Maybe it's getting out and just journaling about them. Maybe it's just going in your backyard and sitting and setting a timer for 10 minutes and just thinking about that person and their memories in your life. But what can we do today to honor someone that's come before us to make sure that we are remembering those people that have kind of made us who we are, right? They contributed to our lives in different ways. So inspired by the guy with the overpass, if you ever get around to listening to this, sir, I admire your tenacity to display your affection for this person in your life. So just for today, guys, find a way to honor someone that's passed in your life. And I'll see you tomorrow.