This short offering is about something I experienced in the summer of 2022. I was officiating at a destination wedding and met someone I had met before but had no memory of having met. And how that exchange brought me to an understanding about this work and about my life.
I was officiating a destination wedding in a very rural part of Colorado. Arriving the evening of the rehearsal and dinner to follow, I was introduced to the brides mother and her +1 significant other. At the small, intimate catered dinner I visited with the rest of the family members and the rest of the bridal party.
The following morning when I arrived back to the venue, I was invited to join those who were not immediately needed for hair, gowns and photos to have coffee and a buffet breakfast. I said good morning to the mother of the brides +1, who was opposite me going down a beautifully appointed buffet table and he said to me, “You know, we have met before”. It was not said at all in an unkind way or with any hint of judgement. It was said with softness and tenderness.
I immediately apologized for not being able to place him and asked him where we'd met. He answered, “Two years ago. When my wife died at Valley View Hospital”. I asked her name and even that didn't help me bring forth a memory. I didn't tell him that, I merely said, “I'm so sorry to have forgotten meeting you before.” And then he said, “That's OK. You meet a lot of people, but I'll never forget you being there”. It was said with such kindness and sorrow etching his face; it was said with the pain of that loss.
I never knew the day would come that I would forget a single death. When I first started working with Hospice and also at the hospital as a chaplain, every death I was honored with bearing witness to was filed away with details; names and circumstances. At that time, I could never have imagined a day when I would forget someones face or their name.
But, that morning, that day arrived. I think I may have already known. Somehow I had been feeling the details of names and faces leave me; begging off for their full freedom; asking to be released. I know I don't need to carry them, in fact, I don't deserve to carry them. I don't need to remember all of their names or their stories. I only need to remember what they, in their dying, taught me about living. What they, in their dying, rendered upon those who loved them. And what they, in their dying, left behind.
I've always believed the ones who go are good; golden in fact, is a word I use often. And as long as I am one of the ones still here, I will continue to be one of the ones left behind. So I will, hopefully, continue until my dying breath to give back what I feel I have so freely been given; an insiders perspective to peoples lives at one of their most poignant moments.
Everyone has something to give the world; but not everyone gets to know what that is. And sometimes we give to someone else, that which is the gift we have for the world, and that someone else then passes it along. Kind of like I am doing with these stories.
In the years I have carried these stories I thought would be a book, I often wondered what it was that was keeping me from making it happen.
I always had reasons for not putting the book in book form; just as I often have excuses for not working on this website. But it occurred to me once the pieces started to fall into place so seamlessly with this project that it was absolutely what I was meant to do.
These stories all began with someone else, many of whom are no longer here.
I am honored to offer them on behalf of the ones who lived them. I am honored to try to share them in a way that touches those who listen, to share them in a way that maybe causes someone to pause and reconsider some aspect of their own life, or, even their own death. It becomes easier and easier to create thoughts and experiences to share on this site.
I hope you'll continue to come back. And if you have suggestions or comments I hope you will share them. My email is on the website seanjeung.com and I welcome your thoughts. Depending on what happens with this, I may or may not be able to answer them all but I promise you, I will read them all.
This is Sean Jeung
I hope you will join me again, where the veil grows thin.