Just a thought
We have been working through a spat of deaths, something that seems to happen more often as we age. In the past week we have attended one funeral and one memorial service. The funeral was for a grand lady who died of complications from COVID at 92----fully vaxxed and boosted 
The memorial service was for the oldest son (57) of some very dear friends. Their son was an enigma. He was a highly respected electrician and supervisor who never drank during the week but crawled inside a bottle every weekend. He had, along life's path, battled drug addiction, mental health issues (bi-polar), he suffered from diabetes, and COPD----but he would do anything for anyone who asked. His parents are both still devastated.
At the memorial service his mother read this:
I'm just ME
I'm not perfect, I'm me. I've made bad decisions and wrong
choices, but I'm me. I've said the wrong things, I've said the
right things, because I'm me.
I don't like everything I've done, but I did it because I'm me.
I've loved the wrong people and trusted the wrong people
and I'm still me.
If I had a chance to start again, I wouldn't change a thing.
Why? because I'm me.
There are a lot of good things about me, you just need to look
past the imperfections to see what's right. If you can't do that
then it's your loss.
I'm the best I can be. I am ME
That signaled to me an acceptance on his mother's part of who her son was---and it was ok, there were no more unfulfilled expectations or hopes. He was the best he could be.
At the end of our days, that is about the best any of us can hope for.
"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity, an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty” ---Sir Winston Churchill
"Political extremism involves two prime ingredients: an excessively simple diagnosis of the world's ills, and a conviction that there are identifiable villains back of it all." ---John W. Gardner
“You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.” ---C. S. Lewis
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