I don’t even know if I’ll be able to go through with it, but I hope I will. Today at Mom’s funeral I hope I’m able to stand up and say a few words about her. It’s a sad duty, but an important one. Because she can no longer speak for herself, we must speak for her.

But how to do that? How to sum up a life in a few paragraphs?

No choice but to plunge in, to type words on a page, print the page, edit the page, add some new words, remove some old ones. No choice but to try and do it. Because the eulogy is not just for the person who is gone, of course; it’s for all of us still present, all of us who must keep on living.