Murmurs #1: The best gift is companionship

2020 was an unforgettable year for many people, and I am no exception, because a female friend of mine who was my age passed away that year. It was a sudden stroke.

Since she had been living in the UK for many years, none of her friends in Taiwan could participate in her funeral.  Thanks to the Internet, although it was held in a Church of England, it can broadcast live on a funeral parlor website and will be stored on the cloud, so that we could mourn remotely together.

Several of her friends in Taiwan decided to schedule a date and place for everyone to get together. In addition to watching the funeral  videos together, we wanted to share our memories of her. Since the funeral videos were all in English, I volunteered to work as a translator. I first watched the entire funeral video, jotting down every word that the officiating pastor said, then translated it all into Chinese, sentence by sentence, and finally printed it out for everyone to read at the gathering.

During this process, I recalled many things that I had done with her. Everyone is a traveler in life.  We may go to a place, meet some people, and we walk with some of them for a while.  Then, we go to the next stop and have to wave goodbye to some people.  My wife's father is 90 years old, and he is still in good health, but all his friends have gone to heaven.  I guess the thought of "I'm the only one left" is a sense of loneliness.

In the video, I saw several British men slowly carrying the coffin to the left side of the front podium while a Chinese R&B song (Confession Balloon by Jay Chou) played in the background. The music sounded young and dynamic, very much Jay Chou's bad boy style. Although the song was not appropriate for the funeral, I felt the love from her British friends. I believe that they chose it just because they thought it was her favorite song. Listening to this song, I saw her smiling mischievously at me. I remembered that she had been suffering from depression for years.  As a Fellowship leader, I had broken many rules for her and kept her company for a period of time.  Finally, she bravely kept her melancholy at bay and went to the UK alone to study for a Master’s degree.  Then she has found a nice boyfriend and finally settled down there.

I read somewhere that when you reach a certain age, you will feel that the simpler things are, the better, so you will feel that receiving gifts is a bit troublesome, because there may be too many things piled up in your house already. You will gradually realize that, the best gift is to accompany friends and family on the journey of life and leave many good memories.

A few days later, I was inspired. I took out a CD and played a song for my wife. I told her : “At my funeral, when everyone watches me enter the crematorium, please be sure to play this song in the background - - After the Love Has Gone (by Earth, Wind and Fire) ".