According to Me: I hope they’ll remember

I hope they’ll know I loved God. I hope they’ll know I loved God and I loved my family. I hope they’ll know I loved God and I loved my family and I believed in working hard and doing right for the sake of right, regardless of circumstances.

These are the things I have come to believe about myself. Whether or not they are the things I communicate to the world through the way that I live, that remains to be seen. But those are the things I hope people will remember when, one day, I am but a memory.

These were my thoughts this week in the wake of a funeral in which I watched so many people gather to pay respect to a man whose life was lived, probably, far better than I can hope to live mine.

I don’t think we think about death enough. And I know we don’t talk about it nearly enough. Societally, we have become so hardened to the notion of death thanks to an entertainment culture that has managed to take the reverence out of it.

But death should be revered. And revered to the utmost.

I believe the Bible and every word that it says. As such, I have very specific beliefs about life and death and the way that we must live the former so as to not have to fear the latter.

Regardless of one’s belief system, death is inarguable. It is one of life’s few certainties.

What that means – among so many other things – is that our days are numbered. Furthermore, we don’t know what that number is.

That’s the great secret that so few ever seem to fully understand: time is finite and yet presents a variable for which we cannot solve.

Every minute we spend is a minute that cannot be replaced. Every hour that passes is an hour that will never return.

That leaves each of us a limited, yet unknown, number of hours to impact this world in some way, to partake of this life with vibrance and vigor.

The fleeting inherency of the hours of our days leaves us little time to squander on worry, negativity, undue conflict, stress or a downtrodden countenance. Those are not things for which any of us would like to be remembered. And they are not the things we want to perpetuate in a world that needs not our help in sowing negativity.

I want to be remembered differently, both at life’s end and now as I pass through this earthen vessel.

I hope they’ll know I loved God. I hope they’ll know I loved God and I love my family. I hope they’ll know I loved God and I loved my family and I believed in working hard and doing right for the sake of right, regardless of circumstances.

Jeremy D. Smith is managing partner of The West Alabama Watchman. He has covered news and sports in Demopolis since 2008. His column, According to Me, appears weekly on WestAlabamaWatchman.com.