Diverse Friendships and Life Lessons

I just finished reading this book entitled "Annie Freeman's Fabulous Traveling Funeral." I really enjoyed it. It was a good fiction book about friendship, evaluating life, and taking time to have some fun. The story centers around the funeral of a woman, Annie, who plans a traveling funeral just before she dies. She sends five of the most influential, important women in her life on a two week journey and asks them to spread her ashes in various places across the U.S. Her friends don't find out why it's special or significant to Annie until they get to their destination.



Sure there were parts in the book that dragged out or seemed a bit far-fetched. But the concept of the book and the life lessons really resonated with me. I love a good book, (movie, song) that stops and makes you think deeply the way this one did with me. I really don't like funerals. They're sad and hard to deal with. Like the book says, funerals are for the living. So I loved the idea of planning my own funeral and my friends and loved ones having fun on my behalf after I've gone.


I look at all the people in my life that I am lucky to know. I have a bunch of diverse friends -- some Christians, some atheists, some Republicans, some Democrats, some who hate both, some white, some black, some male, some female, and on and on. All of them have shaped me and influenced me in some way. Some of them I feel so incredibly close to but have never even met in real life. They are my virtual friends, my true soul sisters. They bring out something in me and make me want to give a part of myself that I didn't know was there or even existed before. It's wonderful. I have my sanity because of the people in my current life.


This book makes me more appreciative of my friends and of the life I have. Even though I don't have it all figured out, even though I'm not sure I believe in God and heaven most of the time, even though I'm not sure if I am Republican just because I voted that way, even though I don't know if I am a good mom, even though I don't know what I want do with the rest of my life, I do know this....that I'm a lucky lady for the life I've led so far. I'm a lucky gal for those people who have touched me in some way, shape or form. I'm lucky for getting to live in the places I have lived and the travels I have gotten to make. I am lucky because I'm pausing to write this post at this moment and reflect on who I am and what I have.


So if I die tomorrow or the next or years from now, I hope that maybe something like a traveling funeral will happen in my honor. I hope that maybe some of my wonderful friends who don't know each other would get the chance to meet in real life, kick back and have a few drinks and pause to think about their lives too. And then like the book says, Pause, reflect and then go on.


Thanks to the author Kris Radish for writing a book that made me pause and is helping me to move on in my life in a new way that I needed to. Thanks to all my wonderful friends who may read this. I love you all. You're all my heroes and thanks for loving me back as I am.