Nothing to Say

RW was a man who helped families say goodbye. As a pastor, he was familiar with death and funerals. I wonder how many funerals he officiated. I wonder what he felt as he prepared for his first funeral. I have no doubt these events impacted him. He was a deep thinker. I can't imagine he would summarize someone's life without really processing the truth, the legacy, the meaning of the life that had passed.
Today I am reading through old notes, quotes, and comments that I keep handy. I came across and email from Jon Mitchell, sent to me in February of 2006. He had stumbled on the written text of a eulogy that RW gave for one of his friends.

"When some men come to the end of their way and their last rights are spoken, it is necessary to dress up their eulogies as much as permissible to make things look as good as possible. When other men die, a simple honest statement of the facts is sufficient for the good lives they lived. When other men die, words fail. The human language is not sufficient to express all that ought to be said.
Words cannot be framed that are adequate enough to express how noble has been the life which has been plucked from among us."

RW, you have been gone for years now. Yet your impact on my life still shapes the ebbs and flows of my days. I still miss you. And when I hear of great men, I still measure their greatness by you. Your life is one of those where "words fail." And beyond the words that you penned, there really is nothing to say.