February 24, 2024

It's been a busy week, fingers crossed that some of the applications I've submitted will get through to interviews. Thoughts and Prayers.

In the meantime, I am so grateful to be helping support my family's monument business. Being able to use technology and a growth mindset to really help the business look to the future has been amazing.

My family has been in the funeral business my whole life, and so while death and loss are hard, I love having the opportunity to do what I love to do...which is help people. Empower them to celebrate the lives that touched them and create beautiful works of art to ensure that a life may be gone but will never be forgotten. It's humbling to be reminded that we are all human.

If you've met me, you probably know that I strive to project positivity and choose the way I move through the world very carefully. I am drawn to the negative, it's like an addiction. It's so easy to find yourself wandering down the rabbit hole of what ifs and if onlys. It's why I am very limited on my social media participation. It's why I fight every day to maintain an upbeat attitude and count my blessings. I've seen how negativity can be a drug.

All this to say, we all deal with loss, maybe today it's your job...or that interview....or that pen that you know you were holding 2 seconds ago....or something/someone that can't be replaced. It's okay to grieve, it's okay to be angry or sad or to shut down so that you can make it through the day. I hope though, that whatever your current loss you take a moment to celebrate life.

As I've been on this journey of trying to figure out how we better serve our customers and our community, there is this one idea or though that I keep coming back to...

Every life is a work of art. Just by existing in this world that person, or pet left a mark on the earth. Left a legacy in the communities they interacted with. Some things good, some things not so good, some legacies are historic and some are just ordinary, but they each change the fundamental makeup of world just by being. It's an honor to be able to help create a work of art to celebrate the work of art that is a life.

There is a life that was lost this month that has been coming up on my news feed lately and probably yours, Nex Benedict. While I don't pretend to know all the details, and regardless of the full story, what stood out to me was a statement from the mom "Nex gave us that respect and we are sorry in our grief that we overlooked them. I lost my child, the headstone will have correct name of their choice."

This week, I've talked to a family who lost a son around my brother's age, someone working to create markers for unmarked graves, a father finally getting a monument for his daughter's grave almost 24 years after her passing....I hope that this family is able to create a beautiful tribute to the work of art that is Nex Benedict. May they rest in peace as their true authentic self.

I'll end with this, If you are reading this...as the weather starts to warm, and they flowers start to grow and bloom...

Take a day and go visit a Cemetary near you. Whether you know someone that is buried there or not, stroll through the history of people that have left their mark on this world. Take a moment to appreciate the stones that mark their legacy. Maybe find one that you like and imagine a story of what their life was, who they were, and remember them in some way. How do you want to be remembered? How would you design your headstone to tell people who you were and what you loved in the simplest way possible? Don't let it be sad, let it be amazing, let it be beautiful, imagine in hundreds of thousands of years someone stumbling across that stone, like a cave painting or a Greek temple and knowing this person is here, their life touched this place.

After all, matter is neither created, nor destroyed....