Aunt Helen’s Eulogy

My Aunt Helen died on October 20, 2021. Today was her memorial service. This was the eulogy I delivered for her.

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In life, Aunt Helen never married or had her own children.

But she built her own loving family out of her extended family and friends.

She was a beloved daughter and sister.

She had 3 nieces and 1 nephew.

She was my GooGoo (which means “aunt” in Chinese), but in reality, she was everybody’s Aunt Helen.

Aunt Helen was someone a person wanted to be like when they grew up or when they got older, whichever came first.

She stayed active and exercised almost daily without making a big deal or a social media post about it.

She was a great cook.

She was cool with new technology, even into her 80s.

Over the past few years, I’ve been teaching her how to look for cross-stitch patterns on Pinterest, and she played on her iPad every night for years.

She lived a happy and active long life with her family.

But as the people left behind, we all miss what we’ve always known.

Because we’ve never known how different life is without her until now.

I’ll miss her kindness, her generosity, her dry sense of humor.

And most of all, her constancy, just knowing that she’s there.

There’s a quote by Jamie Anderson, a writer on Dr. Who —

“Grief, I’ve learned, is really just love. It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot. All that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go.”

And as you all know, Aunt Helen was known for what she gave to others.

I would like for her kindness to still be with us in the world, so that the love we want to give to Aunt Helen still has a place to go.

In the envelope with your program, you’ll find a bookplate sticker that says #BooksFromAuntHelen.

If there’s a book that is meaningful to you or that Aunt Helen would have liked or a book that can go do good in the world, find a way to give or donate it to someone who needs it or to your local library or school.

I think Aunt Helen would like the idea of more books in the world because of her.

Kindness makes the grief feel more manageable.

I’ve told my kids A and J that we will always have our memories of Aunt Helen and that her memory lives on in the echoes of us and our actions.

Let’s make her proud.