new career...

Well, I'm four days into my first week of orientation and training with the infamous Forest Lawn Memorial Parks & Mortuaries throughout Southern California.  I've been hired after two months of heavy Human Resource screening and interviewing as an Advance Planner serving families in the process of pre-arranging their funeral and cemetery property needs.  My main office will be out of the Cypress Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Orange County.  Forest Lawn is well known for the many celebrities memorialized in their parks.  As a matter of fact, my current four weeks of training in the Glendale Forest Lawn is just a stones throw from the resting place of Michael Jackson.  I daily see fans paying tribute and displaying flowers and pics in his honor.  Forest Lawn has an incredible reputation for integrity and longevity in the business.  Although I confess I'm not enjoying the daily commute to Glendale from Huntington Beach on the congested highways during these first four weeks of training, I'm very excited about this opportunity to serve families in this area doing something I really believe in, pre-planning the inevitable for all of us.  I'm continuing in my studies as well, full-time, working on my second masters degree, so my time is not wasted, but highly regimented and scheduled.

I have literally attended and presided over hundreds of funerals during the past twenty-plus years.  I have never heard people say something bad or negative about their loved one, no matter how they lived and the choices they made.  Something good and positive can always be said of someone.  I've been thinking of this as I've walked the acreage of the Forest Lawn parks, stopping to read inscriptions on memorial tablets.  I've been thinking about what people may say about me on the day I die.  Have you ever done that, thought about how you want to be remembered?  One author whom I can't remember said that there are three deaths we encounter:  One is our physical death, the second is our loved one's missing us and grieving over the loss of us, and the third is when we are forgotten.  My new career is helping people avoid all together that third and unnecessary death of being forgotten. 

Back to the fact that there is always "something positive to think and say about someone," if it is true and we are all able to find a positive attribute and kind word to say that descirbes even the worst of individuals (and my experience presiding over funerals in the past has proven this to me), what would it be like if we chose to think and speak about others the same way while they are still living?  Life is short in the larger scheme of things.  Think of the person you perceive the most negatively, then think of what you would actually say at their memorial if given the opportunity (I guarentee you wouldn't stand up and say, "she was a lier and deceived us all"), then decide to live today in view of at least one positive aspect of this loved individual (remember, no one is ever unloved in God's eyes). 

Well, I need to get off to work.... WOW IT FEELS GOOD TO SAY THAT!!!!!!!