Member-only story
Celebrate People Now — While You Still Can
Acknowledgment and appreciation are oftentimes the only gift that truly matters to many people.
Before you post that….
I awakened blurry-eyed to an early alarm and grabbed my phone. I needed to get the details for an event I was attending that morning, so I jumped online to pull up the event. As I log in, I’m instantly greeted with reminders of today’s birthdays — Laurie, John, and Alec — and I’m prompted to wish them all a super happy, fun day.
I posted the auto-populated “Happy Birthday!” with a stream of birthday emojis that hopefully wouldn’t look as redundant as every other post they would be getting that day. I hit send on each and landed on my home screen.
And that’s when I immediately froze.
The things she had never heard before
There was an announcement that someone very dear in our community had passed suddenly the night before. The tributes were already rolling in as people had many personal stories of their beloved friend to share as they wrote their final words of love and appreciation to this dear woman.
She had impacted people so deeply through her teaching, acts of kindness, and championship of those in…
