I have been doing too many of these lately.
With my uncle's passing, I am now the last living Huddleston male.
Here is the eulogy:
With my uncle's passing I now have some big shoes to fill. In a world that seems obsessed with words, flash, PR, and brands, I learned from my grandfather, father, and uncle the meaning of loyalty, the gifts of service, and most of all deep roots. I remember being well into my twenties before I realized how abnormal it has become for a family to see each other as much as mine. You mean you don't visit you grandparents every week?
On my weekly visits to my grandparents, often Ray and his wife Connie would come by, or even be there before us. This was never planned. Sunday is just a good visiting day. And, for the record, my mom and dad made their visits so dang early on Sundays that I rarely ran into them.
Does this sound simple? Fine, it is. But as the personal development guru Jim Rohn shows, if something is easy to do, it is also easy to not do. There are hundreds of other priorities and clever reasons to not make time for your family. That has not been the Huddleston way. It was not uncle Bipper's way.
As a teacher it's a pity that one lesson I cannot truly teach my students is how to get matters of loyalty and love right. But you have to have good examples. And you have to have good kin folk.
In little over a year this family has had more loss than what most families experiences in a decade, and the world has lost three great men.
