30 days of Love
At my neighbor's funeral, a lot of people stood up and said some very nice things. Prior to and just after his death, people filled up his "care page" (provided through UM Hospital) with kind comments, memories and all around nice things about him. This got me to thinking that I should tell people NOW the kind things that I think about then, the memories that I have about them, and all around nice things.
I started the day after the funeral (last Wednesday). I went through my Facebook friends and wrote down the names of people I know personally or have gotten to know fairly well online. Then I divided them into groups either of how I met them or common friends or whatever. My initial goal was to get through 5 people a day for 30 days. I had no idea how emotionally exhausting this exercise would be! I'm nowhere near where I wanted to be, so this may end up being a lot more lovin' time than I thought.
I start each email with a little disclaimer and explanation of why I am doing this. The disclaimer is to state that I am not doing this to get anything in return. That is, I am not an attention whore who is doing this just so people will turn around and say how freakin' cool I am. No. It's not about that. I've heard back from about 1/2 of the people, thanking me and a few did say nice things which I really appreciated; however, it's not about that. This is not to say that I want to get replies that say "suck me, you suck" :) but it's more about saying the things now, when we aren't hooked up to machines, losing cognition or stomping around half-insane, like my late neighbor (who I sincerely hope is happily cruising around the afterlife, sayin' "'sup" to Abe Lincoln or whomever).
If you haven't gotten your email yet, please don't fret...it's taking forever. And as I said, there are some folks that I just don't know well enough to have any shared memories with...but maybe by the time I'm done, we will!
I started the day after the funeral (last Wednesday). I went through my Facebook friends and wrote down the names of people I know personally or have gotten to know fairly well online. Then I divided them into groups either of how I met them or common friends or whatever. My initial goal was to get through 5 people a day for 30 days. I had no idea how emotionally exhausting this exercise would be! I'm nowhere near where I wanted to be, so this may end up being a lot more lovin' time than I thought.
I start each email with a little disclaimer and explanation of why I am doing this. The disclaimer is to state that I am not doing this to get anything in return. That is, I am not an attention whore who is doing this just so people will turn around and say how freakin' cool I am. No. It's not about that. I've heard back from about 1/2 of the people, thanking me and a few did say nice things which I really appreciated; however, it's not about that. This is not to say that I want to get replies that say "suck me, you suck" :) but it's more about saying the things now, when we aren't hooked up to machines, losing cognition or stomping around half-insane, like my late neighbor (who I sincerely hope is happily cruising around the afterlife, sayin' "'sup" to Abe Lincoln or whomever).
If you haven't gotten your email yet, please don't fret...it's taking forever. And as I said, there are some folks that I just don't know well enough to have any shared memories with...but maybe by the time I'm done, we will!