In Loving Memory of Mom

She passed away on January 28th, 2011 around 6:30PM. She was only 66 years old. The funeral services were held at Featheringill mortuary on the following Wednesday. I made a video/photo collage, two picture frames, and wrote a speech for her.


Here is the video/photo collage

Below is my speech.


Good Afternoon everyone. Thank you for joining us today to pay respect to our Mom.

My mom is the strongest woman that I have ever known. She had enthusiasm, gentleness, compassion, and an encouraging spirit. She was appreciative of life. She made many souls happy and moved us all. Everyone who has tasted her cooking can understand this very well. She was a very hard worker who never gave up. Every photo she was in was beautiful and she had a countless collection.

We will no doubt miss her presence. It's okay to cry a little but I thought that doing so would make her sad if she knew that we were crying. Instead of being sad, I think it is better if we celebrate all the great things she had accomplished by being an amazing wife to her husband, mother to her children and grandmother to her grandchildren. She sacrificed everything so that we could have a better tomorrow. She was generous to us and always selfless.

A Buddhist Monk named Thich Nhat Hanh said that “our true nature is the nature of no birth and no death.” Our lives cannot be represented with a straight line beginning with our birth and ending with our death. Our lives more closely resemble a circle which has no beginning and no end. One day my dad explained to me that a tree bears fruit when certain conditions are met. Imagine that you are one of the fruits. Then that fruit will ripen and eventually fall off the tree and back into the earth. It will decompose and become food for the tree. This is the circle of life. If we can understand this then we will realize that birth is not the beginning of life and that death is not the end. These two events are more like doorways that mark important passages in the circle of life.

Nothing exists independently by itself. I cannot exist alone by myself. I am a product of my Mom and Dad. A part of Mom will always be in me, and in my brother and my sister. A part of her will also be in her grand children. If we can think deeply, we can appreciate her at all times because she is always with us in one form or another. If there is no real death, then there is no need for fear or sadness.

Mom is with us always if we can think deeply enough to see her by looking into ourselves. If we want to continue to take care of Mom, we should take care of ourselves. I hope all of you will leave here with no sadness and no fear and with the desire to take care of yourselves. That is the lesson that I think Mom would have wanted us to learn. Thank you all very much for listening and coming to pay respect to our Mom.