Click HERE to view Rev. Jimmie Scott’s guided meditation during the service.
SONG LYRICS
Chorus:
Here’s to the ones that we got
Cheers to the wish you were here, but you’re not
‘Cause the drinks bring back all the memories
Of everything we’ve been through
Toast to the ones here today
Toast to the ones that we lost on the way
‘Cause the drinks bring back all the memories
And the memories bring back, memories bring back you
There’s a time that I remember, when I did not know no pain
When I believed in forever, and everything would stay the same
Now my heart feel like December when somebody say your name
‘Cause I can’t reach out to call you, but I know I will one day, yeah
Everybody hurts sometimes
Everybody hurts someday
But everything gon’ be alright
Go and raise a glass and say
Chorus
Doo doo, doo doo doo doo
Doo doo doo doo, doo doo doo doo
Doo doo doo doo, doo doo doo
Memories bring back, memories bring back you
There’s a time that I remember when I never felt so lost
When I felt all of the hatred was too powerful to stop (ooh, yeah)
Now my heart feel like an ember and it’s lighting up the dark
I’ll carry these torches for ya that you know I’ll never drop, yeah
Everybody hurts sometimes
Everybody hurts someday
But everything gon’ be alright
Go and raise a glass and say
Chorus
Doo doo, doo doo doo doo
Doo doo doo doo, doo doo doo doo
Doo doo doo doo, doo doo doo
Memories bring back, memories bring back you
Doo doo, doo doo doo doo
Doo doo doo doo, doo doo doo doo
Doo doo doo doo, doo doo doo (ooh, yeah)
Memories bring back, memories bring back you
Yeah, yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, doh, doh
Memories bring back, memories bring back you
MESSAGE
So on a quiet hill in the country, a 98-year-old Mother Superior was dying. And all of the nuns were around her trying to bring her comfort in her last hours. And they offered some warm milk; she didn’t take it. And then after a while, just sitting with her, they went to warm up the milk, one of the nuns. And as she was warming it up, she noticed a bottle of whiskey: Irish whiskey. And she poured a generous amount into the milk as she continued warming it up. And then next, by the bedside, the same nun held the glass to her lips and gave her a sip. And then she wanted another sip. [Congregation laughs] And she had another sip and another sip until the glass was completely empty. And she had a big smile on her face and she said, “That was delicious; thank you.”
And the nuns were shocked; they said, “Mother!” They couldn’t believe she had this little burst of energy. And they wanted to take advantage and they asked sincerely: “Please, give us some wisdom before you die.”
And the Mother Superior raised herself up a little bit and, with a pious look on her face she said, “Don’t sell that cow!” [Drummer does rim shot drum roll; congregation laughs]
Well, now; okay. [Laughs] Okay. How about this one? [Congregation laughs]
A police officer sees a drunk guy searching for something near a streetlight and asked what he lost.
And he said, “Well, I lost my keys.”
So he gets down on his knees and tries to help him, as well. He can’t find it. And the officer says, “Are you sure this is where you lost it?”
He said, “No; I lost it over at the park.”
He said, “Well, why are we looking here?”
He said, “Because the light is better here.” [Drummer does rim shot; congregation laughs]
Okay. [Laughs] Okay.
So something that every one of us will experience in life is loss. Dealing with loss is one of the most painful and difficult aspects of living. And, of course, we’re going to lose keys. We’re going to lose a receipt or a piece of jewelry or a Tupperware lid or a single sock … or whatever it is that we tend to lose a lot.
But what I’m talking about is a major loss: a loss that impacts our lives, our way of life and, particularly, our level of peace of mind and happiness. From the most profound loss of the death of a loved one — whether a parent or a sibling, a parent or a child. Whether it is the loss of a job; whether it is the death of a pet; whether it’s the end of a relationship through divorce or a breakup; or it’s a loss that comes with aging … of not being able to do the things we used to do, including not being able to drive any longer. Maybe it is a change in our lifestyle because of a financial loss or bankruptcy or a significant injury. Or a terminal diagnosis. Maybe it is moving from one state to another and having a change of having to start life over again.
Every one of us has experiences of loss — significant loss — in our lives. And I’ll tell you that loss is a natural part of life. In the Book of Ecclesiastes it says, “For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born and a time to die. A time to plant and a time to harvest. A time to weep and a time to laugh. A time to mourn and a time to dance.”
And even though it’s natural, it is not easy. And one of the reasons that I think losses are so difficult for us is because they really represent endings. We don’t like endings. You know, when we feel that is the end of a way of life that we really want and liked; that is the end of our happiness; that is the end of the normal way of life that I’ve gotten accustomed to. We think it represents a door being closed permanently, and that life will never be the same.
Endings kind of rock us at our foundation, and they feel like they destabilize our entire lives. And I think what really gets us the most is wondering if we’re going to be okay. I think losses get us to that area where we’re afraid of our own vulnerability and our own mortality.
The way that we process loss is what we call grieving. And grieving isn’t easy. It is feeling the hurt and the pain and discomfort. And it’s scary for us. And sometimes the reality is there’s no easy way around it. We want to avoid it. We want to skip through it as quickly as we can, but we really can’t. It’s an important and a healthy thing for us to grieve. And we need to have the courage to be able to move through that level of hurt and feeling and pain.
Learning to deal with loss and grief is a vital part of life, because life is about change. From the time we are born to the time we die, our lives are changing. Our bodies change. Our relationships change. Our family dynamics change. We change: our likes; our dislikes. Our styles change; fashion changes. All of life changes. We’re always dealing with changes.
But there are some losses that are more devastating than others. And they’re a part of our life, as well.
I believe that the better we deal with loss, and the better we are at grieving, the better we can live our lives. The more we can enjoy and experience and fully enjoy this incredible gift of life that we’ve been given.
So this morning we’re talking about how to deal with loss. And we’re in Week #3 of our five-week Fall version of “The Songs of Life.” Because as we all know, music touches us in a profound way. It opens our hearts; it can sometimes help us cry. It can inspire us; it can get us through a difficult period in our lives.
Week #1 we looked at “You Say” by Lauren Daigle. And that message was about believing, and especially believing in yourself. And then last week: Ringo Starr’s “It Don’t Come Easy.” This life doesn’t come easy, but if you work hard, it will get better. That if we’re able to let go of the past and make peace and open our hearts, life will get better. It doesn’t come easy, but it’s absolutely possible for life to get better if we’re willing to work at it.
And today we’re going to look at Maroon 5’s hit from 2021 called “Memories.” And it was written because their manager died, and it was also their friend, not just their manager. And it was dedicated to anyone and everyone who has lost someone that they love.
And so this song is kind of sad. And it’s real. And it’s honest. But I think it’s also hopeful. And I think it’s also a healing song, as well.
You know, I wanted to do this song for two reasons. One because, as you know, I lost my brother six months ago. And that previous year with his pancreatic cancer was a tough time. And this song actually was very healing for me during that process.
And then the second one is because talking about death and dying and loss is not easy. It’s not comfortable for anyone. It’s vital, and we’d rather just not talk about it. And even this week, I questioned why I was doing this and wanted to back out. But there was really no way to back out! [Congregation laughs] Because it is awkward. And sometimes we don’t want to talk about it. Sometimes we’re like Woody Allen, who once said, “It’s not that I’m afraid of dying; I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” [Congregation laughs]
So my mom died 11 years ago. And then, after that, my brother, Derek, got all the 10 kids around the table three days after the funeral. And his opening line to us was, “The next one to die will be one of us.” [Congregant phone rings loudly] That was rather attention getting; almost as that phone call … [Congregation laughs] A very good attention getting thing.
And what he was wanting to do was: my mom was the hub of the family. Wanted to know: Is our commitment for wherever we are, are we going to come together regularly? So he became the hub.
So in this last year, I said, “Hey, do you remember when you said, ‘The next one to die will be one of us’ after mom’s funeral?”
And he said, “Yeah; but I didn’t think it would be me!” [Congregation laughs]
And I’ll tell you, I think there is a lot for us to learn from loss and grieving about living, and how we can live better by what we learn about ourselves and life through loss and grieving. I think it could make us live life more fully.
And so I want to look at some of the message and ideas that we can glean from this song, “Memories,” about how we can live more fully.
So let me just read you the first verse. It says:
There’s a time that I remember, when I did not know no pain
When I believed in forever, and everything would stay the same
Now my heart feels like December when someone says your name
‘Cause I can’t reach out to call you, but I know I will one day, yeah
Everybody hurts sometimes
Everybody hurts someday
But everything gon’ be alright
Go and raise a glass and say,
Here’s to the ones that we got
Cheers to the wish you were here, but you’re not
And so this song starts out with how happy the person is, and then how the sudden change and loss of a loved one has devastated him. Has made him hurt in a deep way.
I think initially when we have a loss in our lives, what we feel like is that we’re never going to get over this. That our pain is never going to end. That we’ll never be happy again, and that our lives have changed forever. And it hurts!
I think grief is a sign of how much we loved. Grief is a sign of how important that person was as a part of our lives, and what a difference they made. Grief is a good and important thing, but it’s so painful we’d rather just shut it down. We’d rather not go there and feel it. But I’ll tell you, unresolved grief — studies show — has a huge negative impact on the quality of our lives. On our level of peace of mind. And whether it affects somebody with their sleep; or they’re very irritable; or they withdraw and are depressed. It has an impact if we don’t allow ourselves to grieve. Don’t allow ourselves to hurt and be honest and process the pain. Because it literally blocks us from being as happy as we want to be.
Helen Keller said, “The only way to get to the other side is to go through the door.” We have to go through it.
When it says, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death” …. You notice it doesn’t say,”Yea, though I run through the valley of the shadow of death” or, “Yea, do I pitch a tent and camp out there for a while and live there.” And that’s a subtle but important thing! Is that grief is something that needs to be processed. It needs to be moved through; it needs to be felt. We can’t rush it, and we can’t also get stuck in it, either.
Everybody knows Elisabeth Kübler-Ross — her stages of grief: denial; anger; bargaining; depression; and acceptance. And sometimes that takes a few years. It is a process. Because when you’re that connected, and when you feel that sense of love and have shared so much, it takes time for that grief to be processed.
Is there anything in your life — any loss that you’ve faced — that you still have some unresolved grief and some processing still that needs to be done? Sometimes we think we can think our way through grief, but it has to be felt. It must be processed, and it must be experienced.
In the Beatitudes it says, “Blessed are they that mourn, for they will be comforted.” We need to be willing to mourn. In our own way, but we need to be willing to.
In Luke it says, “Blessed are they who weep, for they shall laugh.”
And a couple of other messages. Psalm 34 says, “The Lord is close to the broken-hearted and saves those whose spirit is crushed.”
And finally, Psalm 147: “He heals the broken-hearted and binds up their wounds.”
We need to be willing to process. We need to be willing to feel that. And whatever it is in us — for whatever loss it might be — it behooves us to do that if we want to get to a place of peace and live more peacefully and joyously and hopefully.
So the three things for this — to be able to feel our grief — is to be willing to feel it. The second is: Let the people around you who love you support you. Let yourself be loved. Let people surround you in your weak times. And third, give it to God. God will heal your heart.
There’s a line that says, “Give all your cares to God, for God cares.” As you release it to God, our brokenness; our pain; our woundedness, in time, absolutely will heal. Our days will get brighter. And we will be able to see the light and find more joy in life again.
And the second thing we need to do in loss is to remember the good. There’s an Irish proverb that says, “When things go right, no one remembers and when things go wrong, no one forgets.” [Congregation laughs] Sometimes we remember the bad and forget the good. Human beings have an incredible capacity to take things for granted. Sometimes we take people in our lives for granted; our work; our health; our money; our jobs. We tend to focus sometimes on what isn’t working and what we don’t like and what’s wrong about our lives.
We’re told, “Don’t look back” and, “Don’t live in the past,” but I think it’s good to remember and reflect on the blessings and the good and the joys that we’ve experienced in life, especially when we have lost someone. Or lost a particular way.
In the Bible, it says the word “remember” over 250 times. Here are some of them:
“Remember the Lord, Thy God”; “Remember my commandments”; “Remember the words I have spoken to you”; “Remember the Sabbath”; “Remember my servants, Abraham and Isaac.”
Jesus emphasized the importance of remembrance when he told his disciples, “Do this in remembrance of me.” Remember what I’ve taught you; remember what you’ve seen in me. And remember to live it for yourself.
Memories bring back, memories bring back you
When we remember, we reconnect with that love. We reconnect with that joy and reconnect with all the things that we shared or overcame together. It’s good to remember those things: how blessed we were to have those individuals or those experiences in our lives.
You know, I have a lot of memories of my brother. He was 13 years older than me. And in a large family, you get shuffled up so that the older ones have to do more for the younger ones. He taught me how to count; taught me how to tie my shoes; taught me how to drive. I mean, he taught me all kinds of stuff! All kinds of experiences that we shared. There are pictures that still touch my heart of when we at a fountain. And there’s a picture of me, at 7, with his arm around me. He was 20. I mean, he was kind of “dad-like-ish” to me.
We got to take a lot of trips together: our cruise to Alaska; we did a Mediterranean cruise. And we were in Rome, and we’re at the Vatican. We’re at St. Peter’s Square; we can’t find Derek. And these tours are going on. And he comes back about 20 minutes later and he says, “You’ve got to try this pizza! It is the best pizza ever!” [Congregation laughs] He’s got a bag: he had pizza — and it was delicious.
But we still tell that story. He got all his bag of pastries. And we’re eating there, and so we’re missing some of the tour. And we still reflect back on that. And the thing that sticks out is how wonderful it was about he and his pizza thing, even more than the Vatican and the Sistine Chapel!
Sometimes memories can just make you laugh and smile and realize how blessed you were to have been loved and have shared time and experience with individuals. You know, I still have his voicemails that sometimes I just listen to because I just want to hear his voice.
So if somebody you might have lost … what are some of your memories that you treasure? How did you meet? And what did you like about each other that developed either a friendship or a marriage? What were those things like? I think they help trigger in us that love and an appreciation for the life that we’ve had.
Sometimes when you’re in pain, you can’t remember. But I think when we can get ourselves to, I think it renews us and helps us realize what a difference that person made in our life, and how blessed we were to have experienced it. And how important they are to us. I think remembering reminds us, and I think it’s a good and important thing to remember and reflect on the good.
You know, there’s a theme in the Old Testament and that is: the children of Israel always forgot how good God was. They always forget every trial. You know, they get out of something; they’d forget. Get out of slavery; they’d forget. And so they would build altars to say, “Oh, remember when God did that?” Sometimes those little triggers: we need them in our lives to remember all the things that happened and all the blessings that we had.
Remember in Luke 17 when Jesus healed those 10 lepers? And only one came back to say, “Thanks.” Jesus was a little upset; a little disappointed. He said, “Weren’t 10 healed? Only one comes back? The nine didn’t?” And it wasn’t because he was looking for praise; he was disappointed because the people got something good, and they weren’t willing to appreciate it and give thanks for it … and realize and acknowledge how blessed they are; how their life changed for the better.
And so it’s important for us to look back and realize how blessed we are. Think of all the good things that have happened to us. Because that helps us in our loss; that helps us in our grief. And it helps us to realize that, while we had a loss, we still have so much. We still are blessed in so many ways.
And the final thing is: we’ve got to keep living, and keep living our best. As a minister, I’ve obviously done a lot of funerals in the last 25 years. And the thing is: every single funeral that I’ve done — whether I’ve known the person or not — I learned something new about how fabulous they were. How they touched someone’s lives. Or how they were creative; or how they were generous; or how they were a good cook; or whatever it was!
And then at the end, you always remind everyone that their spirit is alive … and let’s live in the way that they lived. Let’s life with the joy or creativity. And that’s one of the things: I think when a funeral and death happens, it is a heartache and it’s painful. But it’s a reminder to inspire us to live our lives better! You know, for us to be more kind; to be more generous; to be more loving. Because we get to still be here. So we get to live. So maybe can think; it’s like, “How do I want to live better than I’m living now?”
You know, Bronnie Ware wrote a book some years ago called The Top Five Regrets of the Dying. And she was a caregiver for people who had three to six months left to live. And what she found was that the families and the person dying didn’t talk about dying. They just said, “Oh, mom; you’ll be okay.” Everybody just glossed over it when the dying person was a bit scared and wondered what was going on. And the families were, but they wouldn’t talk because they thought it would upset each other.
And then so they would talk to the caregiver. And she would find out all kinds of things, because they wanted to talk about their life. And they all talked about regrets that they had; ways they wish they would have lived. And here’s the top five:
“I wish I’d had the courage to live a life that’s true to myself and not a life that others expected of me.”
“I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.”
“I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.”
“I wish I’d stayed in touch with my friends.”
“I wish I’d let myself be happy (or happier).”
So how would you like to change your life and live it better? How would you be more true to yourself? What ways would you like to express your feelings more to your loved ones? What are ways that you would let yourself be happier? What are ways that you would extend and reach out to your friends and share your love and desire to stay connected? What are the things that you aren’t doing right now that you’d like to do? And what are some of the things that you’d like to stop and maybe change in your life? That would help you live your life more fully, and not have regrets?
Ernest Holmes says, “Never limit your view of life by any past experience; life is infinite energy coupled with a limitless creative imagination.” Even with losses, life is unlimited. Even with losses, life has infinite possibilities of love and goodness. Let’s use our past; let’s use our losses. Let’s use our grief to help us live more fully — to live more freely — so at the end of our lives we’ll say, “I had the time of my life.”
Today’s affirmation was from Psalm 118: “This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.”
You know, loss is a difficult part of life. There are tears and heartache and pain. But there can also be comfort. There can also be healing and peace and strength and hope and can give us the power and inspiration to live an even better life.
If we are willing to process our grief and our feelings; if we are willing to remember the good and celebrate and appreciate all the happy and moments and times; and if we’re willing to keep living our best life … If we keep doing that, we will enjoy life more abundantly, and the losses can actually help us live better.
And that is the message from the song, “Memories.”
God bless you all! [Congregation applauds]
Copyright 2022 Unity of Phoenix Spiritual Center/Rev. Richard Maraj