David Moss’s Eulogy For Neil Norry
I've been thinking about angels.
Not the namby-pamby, silly, rosy, flapping kind.
But the fleshy ones like those that visited people in the Bible.
That look human
That you speak with
That you feed
That sit around the table and drink beer with you,
Those angels that quietly depart before it occurs to you to say,
“Hey, something very weird is going on here;â€
“My God, I've been sent a celestial being and I knew it not!â€
I've been thinking about those earthy kind of almost unrecognizable Bible angels.
And I've been thinking
Damn it, no sneaky angel is going to pull the old silent departure trick on me
Damn it, damn it, damn it,
No tricky angel is going to slink away before I recognize it,
Embrace it,
Bless it.
I've been thinking about angels
The kind that show up in your life and shower you with blessings
so warm,
so gracious,
so generous that you know they must have been sent from somewhere
The kind that conceal their wings behind business deals
And their halos behind partnerships.
The kind that you can laugh with, enjoy, share and advise with.
The kind that celebrate Shabbat with you on three continents.
The kind that encourage you to do the very best you can,
That enable you to share your meager gifts with others,
That support you in contributing what you never knew you could.
The kind that makes your family theirs and their family yours.
I've been thinking about angels
And one or two in particular
That have touched my life
And made it so much richer, so much fuller, so much more blessed.
And,
Damn it, DAMN it, DAMN IT.
No sneaky angels are going to slink out of my life before I've recognized them for exactly what they are
And before I've said
The deepest, most sincere, and most tearful
Thank you
I have ever said.
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