Commemorative Speech

Good evening ladies and gentlemen and fellow students. We are gathered here this
evening to celebrate the graduation of Rockmart High Schools class of 2006. We have
already come a long way, but there are still miles and miles ahead of us. We survived a lot
to get here. We survived the grueling class hours, the teachers, and the mountains of
homework. We also survived the five bomb threats we had this year, and the lockdown
that came with them. We could not have survived this far without our parents to back us
up. They were there to encourage us to believe that we could achieve what we set out to
do. It was our parents support that gave us hope when we were down and struggling. It is
for these reasons that todays victory also belongs to our parents. Together we stand here
on the edge of time itself looking to the future. Now we must seize the future and strive
to be excellent. As for me, I miss all my friends and all the cool teachers. I will miss
people accidentally setting themselves on fire in Ag Mechanics class. I will miss the
morning TV show with Bryces Safari Adventure. I will miss the Friday night football
games, and all the other sports. Even a part of me will miss the bomb threats.

Earlier I

called this a high school, but it is more like an airport terminal with hundreds of planes.
As we each go to board a plane we wonder, Where will it take us, but one thing is for
sure once we depart each of us will soar high, fast, and far towards the horizon.

Welcome

Thank you all for coming to help us celebrate Liza's life and share our grief at her
passing.
Introduction
My name is Carol, and Liza and I have been best friends since childhood. We lived just
five houses apart on National Avenue, and we spent part of nearly every day together as
kids.
Memories
When I think of Liza as a child, I remember how much she loved exploring the ravine
behind our house. Half of our summers were spent wandering through the woods, looking
for crayfish under rocks along the creek, climbing trees, and generally doing things that
would have given our parents gray hair much sooner if they knew what we had been up
to each day.
I have to share one memory that really illustrates Liza's fearless, and sometimes
impulsive, nature. Some of the neighborhood boys had built a rope swing in a tree along
the ravine's edge. Liza, being fearless, decided to give it a try.
As she swung out over the edge, one of the boys jokingly called out, "Jump!" My heart
leapt to my throat as I saw Liza let go of the rope on her next swing out. Luckily she
wound up with nothing more than skinned knees and a sheepish grin that said she
couldn't believe she had just done that, but it just goes to show what a risk taker she was.
More than a simple risk taker, Liza also had a generous soul, as I'm sure many of you
here this morning can attest to. She never met a person in need that she didn't find some
way of helping. Her work as director of our local family shelter became her greatest
passion, and she put in tireless hours organizing meals and places where "her families"
could all stay together until they could get back on their feet. I say, "her families" with all
seriousness because she didn't just take them into shelters; she really took them into her
heart and kept contact with them even after their lives were back on track.
Mention of Family/Friends
When you combine the facts that Liza was a compassionate soul and willing to take risks,
it's not difficult to understand why she ventured out in that terrible snow storm on
Wednesday night to try to take food and diapers to one of her families in need. Yes,
maybe they would have been alright until morning, but that wasn't how Liza would have
thought about it. She would have worried about their empty stomachs and imagined the
sound of that baby's crying. She would have set any thoughts for her safety aside and
gone to their aid, and that's exactly what she did.
Of course, we now know that she never made it to that family. We can second guess
Liza's decision with 20/20 hindsight, or we can embrace the fact that she died doing
something she believed in so deeply. Knowing her as I did, I can tell you that her only
regret about her decision to go out on the road that night would have been that her
husband, Mitch, is now left to carry on without her. As passionate as she was about her
shelter work, Mitch was truly the love of her life.

It may comfort us all a bit to realize that Liza is now reunited with her beloved parents,
Lee and Meredith, and that someday we'll all be together again when we cross over to the
other side. This is only a brief parting in the larger scheme of life.
Closing
One thing you may or may not know is that Liza was a huge fan of the band Queen. She
particularly loved a song called Dear Friends, and she once made me promise that if she
passed before I did, I would play the song at her memorial, or at least read the lyrics. So,
I'll read those now in closing, and I hope they leave you with the message that time will
heal our wounds, and that life truly does go on.

Live your life that the fear of death

can never enter your heart.
Trouble no one about his religion.
Respect others in their views
and demand that they respect yours.
Love your life, perfect your life,
beautify all things in your life.
Seek to make your life long
and of service to your people.
Prepare a noble death song for the day
when you go over the great divide.
Always give a word or sign of salute when meeting
or passing a friend, or even a stranger, if in a lonely place.
Show respect to all people, but grovel to none.
When you rise in the morning, give thanks for the light,
for your life, for your strength.
Give thanks for your food and for the joy of living.
If you see no reason to give thanks,
the fault lies in yourself.
Touch not the poisonous firewater that makes wise ones turn to fools
and robs the spirit of its vision.
When your time comes to die, be not like those
whose hearts are filled with fear of death,
so that when their time comes they weep and pray
for a little more time to live their lives over again

in a different way.
Sing your death song, and die like a hero going home.
The Teaching of Tecumseh

We Remember Them
At the rising of the sun and at its going down,
We remember them.
At the blowing of the wind and in the chill of Winter,
We remember them.
At the opening of buds and in the rebirth of Spring,
We remember them.
At the blueness of the skies and in the warmth of Summer,
We remember them.
At the rustling of leaves and the beauty of Autumn,
We remember them.
At the beginning of the year and when it ends,
We remember them.
As long as we live, they too will live;
for they are now a part of us, as we remember them.
When we are weary and in need of strength,
We remember them.
When we are lost and sick at heart,
We remember them.
When we have joys we yearn to share,
We remember them.
When we have decisions that are difficult to make,
We remember them.
When we have achievements that are based on theirs,
We remember them.
As long as we live, they too shall live,
for they are a part of us, as we remember them.
Author Unknown
I look at life as a gift of God.
Now that he wants it back
I have no right to complain.
Joyce Cary

When you were born,

you cried and the world rejoiced.
Live your life so that when you die,
the world cries and you rejoice.
Cherokee Expression
Whoever brought me here
will have to take me home.
Rumi
Let no one weep for me, or celebrate my funeral with mourning; for I still live, as I pass
to and fro through the mouths of men.
Quintus Ennius
The gods conceal from men the happiness of death, that they may endure life.
Lucan
Death --- the last sleep? No, the final awakening.
Walter Scott
Unto God, the Lord belong the issues of death.
Psalm 68:20
Good men must die, but death can not kill their names.
Proverbs
It is good to die before one has done anything deserving death.
Anaxandrides
There is a dignity in dying that doctors should not dare to deny.
Anonymous
I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of
meeting me is another matter.
Winston Churchill

Do not seek death. Death will find you.

But seek the road which makes death a fulfillment.
Dag Hammarskjld
We cannot banish dangers, but we can banish fears. We must not demean life by standing
in awe of death.
David Sarnoff
The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.
Harriet Beecher Stowe
God's finger touched him, and he slept.
Alfred Lord Tennyson
Here is the test to find whether your mission on earth is finished: If you're alive, it isn't.
Richard Bach
Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
William Shakespeare, Macbeth, 1606
Lord, now lettest now thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word.
Luke 2:29
For death begins with life's first breath
And life begins at touch of death
John Oxenham
As men, we are all equal in the presence of death.
Publilius Syrus

Death - the last voyage, the longest and the best.

Thomas Wolfe
Nothing you can lose by dying is half as precious as the readiness to die,which is man's
charter of nobility.
George Santayana
There is but one freedom,
To put oneself right with death.
After that everything is possible.
I cannot force you to believe in God.
Believing in God amounts to coming to terms with death.
When you have accepted death, the problem of God will be solved, and not the reverse.
Albert Camus\
Seeing death as the end of life is like seeing the horizon as the end of the ocean.
David Searls
Knowledge by suffering entereth,
And life is perfected by death.
Elizabeth Barret Browning
If God hath made this world so fair,
Where sin and death abound,
How beautiful beyond compare
Will paradise be found!
James Montgomery. 1771-1854.
Death came with friendly care;
The opening bud to heaven conveyed,
And bade it blossom there.
Samuel Taylor
Death cometh soon or late;
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds
For the ashes of his fathers

And the temples of his gods?

Thomas B. Macaulay
There is no death! What seems so is transition;
This life of mortal breath
Is but a suburb of the life Elysian,
Whose portal we call Death.
Henry W. Longfellow
In death a hero, as in life a friend!
Alexander Pope
Life is a great sunrise. I do not see why death should not be an even greater one.
Vladimir Nobokov
Death is a delightful hiding place for weary men.
Herodotus
It is a far, far better thing that I do, than anything I have ever done;
it is a far, far, better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.
Charles Dickens
Return to Top
Reflections of a boat in water
I am going to seek the great Perhaps.
Francois Rabelais
It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that
such men lived.
George S. Patton, Jr.
We cannot banish dangers, but we can banish fears. We must not demean life by standing
in awe of death.
David Sarnoff
The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.

E. E. Cummings
A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.
Charles Darwin
There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The
other is as though everything is a miracle.
Albert Einstein
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken
Security is mostly a superstition.
It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it.
Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure.
Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.
Helen Keller
Return to Top
Fireworks flowering in the night sky
Achieving life is not the equivalent of avoiding death.
Ayn Rand
Our care should not be to have lived long as to have lived enough.
Seneca
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts
of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die,
discover that I had not lived.
Henry David Thoreau
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Teddy Roosevelt

Everyone must row with the oars he has.

English Proverb
God will not look you over for medals, degrees or diplomas, but for scars.
Elbert Hubbard
Until you know that life is interesting, and find it so, you haven't found your soul.
Geoffrey Fisher
It is not length of life, but depth of life.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
Return to Top
A child's hand in mothers
Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the
fact.
William Jones
To touch the soul of another human being is to walk on holy ground.
Stephen R.Covey
It's the circle of life, and it moves us all, through despair and hope,
through faith and love, 'till we find our place, on the path unwinding.
Elton John, The Lion King
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone
past over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see
its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
Frank Herbert, Dune
Return to Top
Stained glass window detail of a man suffering
The greater the obstacle, the more the glory in overcoming it.

Moliere
The world is your mirror and your mind is a magnet.
What you perceive is in this world is largely a reflection of your own attitudes and
beliefs.
Life will give you what you attract with your thoughts think, act and talk negatively and
your world will be negative.
Think and act and talk with enthusiasm and you will attract positive results.
Michael LeBeuf
To reach a great height a person needs to have great depth.
Anonymous
People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but
when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there light is from within.
Elizabeth Kubler Ross
Those who wish to sing always find a song.
Swedish proverb
And life is what we make it, always has been, always will be.
Grandma Moses
Every person, all the events of your life are there because you have drawn them there.
What you choose to do with them is up to you.
Richard Bach
Return to Top
Person helping another to walk
It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no man can sincerely
Try to help another without helping himself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen,
not touched. but are felt in the heart.
Helen Keller

If you want happiness for an hour take a nap.

If you want happiness for a day, go fishing.
If you want happiness for a year, inherit a fortune.
If you want happiness for a lifetime, help someone else.
Chinese Proverb
I believe that every human mind feels pleasure in doing good to another.
Thomas Jefferson
If there is light in the soul, there will be beauty in the person
If there is beauty in the person, there will be harmony in the house
If there is harmony in the house, there will be order in the nation
If there is order in the nation, there will be Peace in the World.
Chinese Proverb
Return to Top
Three lit floating candles
Greatness and goodness are not means, but ends!
Hath he not always treasures, always friends,
The good great man? Three treasures, love and light,
And calm thoughts, regular as infants' breath;
And three firm friends, more sure than day and night,
Himself, his Maker, and the angel Death.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 1772-1834.
Life let us cherish, while yet the taper glows,
And the fresh flow'ret pluck ere it close;
Why are we fond of toil and care?
Why choose the rankling thorn to wear?
J. M. Usteri. 1763-1827.
That best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremembered acts
Of kindness and of love.
William Wordsworth. 1770-1850.
Return to Top
Trailing clouds of glory

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:

The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar.
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory, do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy.
William Wordsworth. 1770-1850.
It's often said that life is strange. But compared to what?
Steve Forbert
If you learn from your suffering, and really come to
understand the lesson you were taught,
you might be able to help someone else
who's now in the phase you may have just completed.
Maybe that's what it's all about after all...
Anonymous
The journey is the reward.
Tao Saying
Nothing is so strong as gentleness
and nothing is so gentle as real strength.
Ralph W. Sockman
Expect trouble as an inevitable part of life
and repeat to yourself, the most comforting words of all;
This, too, shall pass.
Ann Landers
Return to Top
Sone carving of face in pain
God shall wipe all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death,
nor crying, nether shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.
Revelation 21:4

Bear patiently, my heart, for you have suffered heavier things.

Homer
I think only through suffering all our wonderful human qualities come out in us.
Unless and until you suffer, how will you understand other's suffering?
Sree Chakravarti
It requires more courage to suffer than to die.
Napoleon Bonaparte
That which does not kill me makes me stronger.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Return to Top
Statue of JesusAlong the Road
I walked a mile with Pleasure;
She chattered all the way.
But left me none the wiser
For all she had to say.
I walked a mile with Sorrow
And ne'er a word said she;
But oh, the things
I learned from her
When Sorrow
walked with me!
Robert Browning
They that sow in tears, shall reap in joy.
Psalm 126:6
The Lord God will wipe all tears from all their faces.
Isaiah 25:8
Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Matthew 5:4

Honest listening is one of the best medicines we can offer the dying and the bereaved.
Jean Cameron ( dying of Cancer in 1982)
You never know till you try to reach them how accessible men are;
but you must approach each man by the right door.
Henry Ward Beecher
Return to Top
Love lies bleeding flowers
Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.
Helen Keller
There is nothing the body suffers which the soul may not profit by.
George Meredith
Sometimes, when one person is absent, the whole world seems depopulated
Allphonse de Lamartine
Grief knits two hearts in closer bonds than happiness ever can;
and common sufferings are far stronger links than common joys.
Alphonse de Lamartine
Just as despair can come to one only from other human beings, hope, too, can be given to
one only by other human beings.
Elie Weisel
We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than
by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines, Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the
trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream.
Mark Twain

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experiences of trial and
suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired and success
achieved.
Helen Keller
Return to Top
Simple white field daisies
Happiness is different from pleasure.
Happiness has something to do with struggling and enduring and accomplishing.
George Sheehan
People living deeply have no fear of death.
Anais Nin
I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme,
and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not
knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without
knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious Ambiguity.
Gilda Radner
Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to
do with it.
Somerset Maughan
This delightfully wry, tongue in cheek comment by Somerset Maughan brings my
collection of inspirational quotations, eulogy quotes and funeral readings to an end.
I sincerely hope you've found what you need.

After the night comes the morning,

Bidding all darkness cease.
After life's cares and sorrows,
His comfort, sweetness and peace.
________
A gentle man
________

Loved & remembered,

always.
________
Loved forever,
Forgotten never
________

A godly man
Who served the Lord
All his days.
________
A loving father is now at rest,
For each of us he did his best.
His love was great, his heart was kind,
A beautiful memory left behind.
________
Although we cannot see you,
You're with us everyday.
The love you gave us all in life,
Death cannot take away.
________
Always in our hearts
________
Always remembered
________
A special smile, a special face,
A special Mum we can't replace.
You gave your love,
Your whole life through.
God bless you Mum,
We love you too.
________
As the bird free of its cage
Seeks the heights,
So the Christian soul in death,
Flies home to God.
________
As we love you,
So we miss you.
________
At rest
________
Blessed are the pure in heart,
For they shall see God.
Matthew 5:8
________

Love lives on
________
May God keep you in His love and
care
________
May she rest in peace with God
________
May the peace of the Lord be with
you
________
Memory is a golden chain,
That binds us till we meet again.
________
Memories are keepsakes,
Treasured forever.
________
Neither height, nor depth,
Nor anything else in all creation,
Will separate us from the love of
God,
That is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
________
No farewells were spoken,
No time to say goodbye.
You were gone before we knew it,
And only God knows why.
________
Of tender heart and generous spirit
________
On earth one gentle soul the less,
In Heaven, one angel more.
________
Our Baby
________
Our little angel
________

But O for the touch of a vanished hand

And the sound of a voice that is still!
-Tennyson
________
Dearly loved, sadly missed.
________
Deep in our hearts you will always stay,
Loved and remembered everyday.
________
Father in thy gracious keeping,
Leave we now, our loved one, sleeping.
________

Our love goes with you

And our souls wait to join you
________
Peace at last
________
Peace,
Perfect peace.
________
Remembered with a smile
________
Remembered with love
________

Forever
in our thoughts
________

Rest in peace
________

Forever
with the Lord
________

Rest, O weary traveller,

For with the dawn comes great joy.
________

Forever young,
Forever in our hearts.
________

Saddened hearts are healed

In knowing the pain of life is over
And the beauty of the soul revealed.
________

Gone are the days,

We used to share.
But in my heart,
Youre always there.
________
Gone fishin'
________
Gone from our home,
But not from our hearts.
________

Sadly missed
________
She touched everyone,
With special love and kindness.
________
Sleeping peacefully
________

Gone is the face we loved so dear,

Silent the voice we loved to hear.
________

The happy hours we once enjoyed,

How sweet the memory still.
Your death has left a vacant space,
Which no one else can fill.
________

Goodnight, Godbless.
________

The Lord is my shepherd,

I shall not want.

________
He gave his today for our tomorrow
________
He honoured us in Life,
We honour him in Death.
________
Her greatest gift,
Was love.
________
Her presence we miss
Her memory we treasure.
Loving her always,
Forgetting her never.
________
"How beautiful life was to me."
________
I am the resurrection and the life.
He that believeth in Me,
Though he were dead,
Yet shall he live.
________
I go to prepare a place for you,
That where I am,
There you may also be.
________
I know that my redeemer lives,
Therefore I too shall live.
________
In glory everlasting
________
In God's care
________
In Loving Memory
________
In memorys garden,
We meet every day.

Through all the tears & heartache,

There's one thing for which I'm
glad,
That you chose me to share with
you
Those precious years we had.
________
Trust in God
________
Until the dawn breaks,
And the shadows fly away.
________
We hold you close within our hearts,
And there you will remain
To walk with us throughout our
lives,
Until we meet again.
________
We love you always
________
We miss his smile, his cheery way,
We miss the things he used to say.
When happy times we oft' recall,
Tis then we miss him most of all.
________
We miss you
________
We miss you and mourn you,
In silence unseen
And dwell on the memories,
Of joys that have been.
________
While he lives
Cherished in our memories,
He is never far away.
________
Wonderful was your love for us

________

________

In Our Hearts Forever

________

Yea though I walk through the

valley
Of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil, for Thou art with
me;
Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort
me.
Psalms 23:4

I will dwell in the House of the Lord,

forever.
________
I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills
________

__