The Sobriety That Died With a Smile – Eddy R.

A very dear friend of ours died, and there's two things that people do when a very dear friend, someone they love very much and share a lot with. When a person like that dies, we tend to curse and weep and run away. Or we can turn and weeps and then sing a song of thanksgiving for God's great gift in the man's life God's great gift through the man to all of his brothers and sisters and God was obviously very busy with Eddie to get this group together this might be the most unlikely group of people ever to inhabit a church building in a single moment so far. I'm going to read a passage from the Gospel according to John that I think evokes something of the kind of gifts that are higher power pressed upon Eddie. I don't think he received this graciously, but he was pressed and I think he took it. It's obvious that he did take it from the very fact that you are here. This is from the 13th chapter of John's Gospel and it describes a scene in the middle of the Last Supper, the day before the man Jesus was crucified. It says, Jesus, fully aware that he had come from God and was going to God, the Father who had handed everything over to him rose from the meal and took off his cloak. He picked up a towel and tied it around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and begin to wash his disciples' feet and dry them with the towel he had around him. Thus he came to Simon Peter and said to him, Lord, are you going to wash my feet? Jesus answered, You may not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand. Peter replied, You shall never wash my foot. If I do not wash you, Jesus answered you will have no share in my heritage Lord Simon Peter said to him then not only my feet but my hands and my head as well after he had washed their feet he put his cloak back on and reclined at table once more he said to them do you understand what I just did for you you address me as teacher and Lord and fittingly enough for that is what I am but if I washed your feet I who am teacher and Lord then you must wash each other's feet what I just did was to give you an example as I have done so you must do I've got the impression that Eddie was a lot like St. Peter he didn't catch on very fast or want to cooperate with that and was cajoled into it so far into it that we can sing such a deeply felt hymn of thanksgiving to God for this beautiful gift of love he sent through him now in the spirit of our gathering we're gathered to to give thanks and to weep and we're going to you weep on your own but we're going to give thanks by asking some of Eddie's friends to come up here and share just a little bit about the way God's gift to Eddie impressed them and I'd like to ask let Hodges come up first I think that Eddie would have wanted this gathering to reflect the spirit of Alcoholics Anonymous and I don't know of any way to do that for myself except to start in this way I am Clint, and I'm an alcoholic. I am. My relationship with Eddie Regan was a varied relationship. I remember sitting in a meeting 11 years ago and hearing him speak from the podium for the first time and laughing and crying with him and with that great, as Terry said, that gift that he was given to recreate the miracle of Alcoholics Anonymous for me every time I heard him and to make me weep and laugh with him. And I loved him for that. The only time I have an identical twin brother that comes down here once in a while and he was at a meeting one time, the only time we ever saw him cry was when Eddie Regan was talking. He was touched by what Eddie had to say. when Eddie found out I was going to law school he had a great love of the law he didn't like lawyers but he had great love for the law and a lot of information about it and he studied the justices on the Supreme Court of this country knew a lot about them and knew what they stood for and how they would come down in a given situation and he'd come up to me and we'd start off talking about some fairly innocuous legal point. And pretty soon we were way over my head in some area that he was completely comfortable in. When I graduated from school, Eddie was there and that night he spoke at a meeting on Saturday night because I had asked him to speak there that night. and since then he's talked to me a couple of times i met with sharon his daughter today and he had a rather elaborate list of instructions carefully designed to avoid having any lawyers involved in any of this at all at some point during the instruction he said if any of these don't make sense call clint hodges so i was grateful to learn that he still doesn't think of me as a lawyer but i loved him i love the marvelous dignity that he had in the marvelous way that he was able to touch so many lives and the things that he stood for were decency and integrity and honesty and sobriety in Alcoholics Anonymous. I was thinking earlier today about a couple of lines that ran through my mind. I read them some time ago. There is an old belief that on some distant shore, far from despair and grief, good friends will meet once more. And if that's so, I'm sure we'll meet Eddie because he was certainly a good friend. Thank you. Jack Turton, would you please? I'm Jack Turdon, an alcoholic. Well, I remember Eddie. Most of us in this room gave him the roses while he was living. I think that's one of the things we learned in AA. I was close to Ed all his AA life, on and off. We were on the same committee for many years. Four years ago at the roundup, I broke off one of my teeth. so I asked Eddie to help me to file it down so he went to the engineer of the hotel and he got a file and he filed he filed my tooth down so it wouldn't cut my gums so he led the meeting that night and he said I want to tell you what happened today. I filed a guy's tooth off, and I'm a printer, and this guy's got 30 years of sobriety, and there was 11 dentists in the audience. So that's how I remember Eddie and the many wonderful things that... Do you know, in my years in AA, he's one guy that I never heard say one bad thing against anybody. There was a few times before I moved out of this community that I wished I could be like a guy like Eddie Regan because I couldn't. Like Chamberlain says, you know, they don't make two of us alike because if they did one of us would be unnecessary. But I want to remember Ed as the last time I saw him. I considered him a very dear friend and Vera and I loved Eddie very much. Thank you very much." Mike Ross is too ill to attend this memorial service tonight, and he asked Len Wilder to say words for himself and for him. I'm Len Wildern. I'm a recurring alcoholic. I was at home last night and the phone rang. And Mike said, Lynn, I can't be there tomorrow night and he would love to be here tonight. He's recovering from surgery in Kazer Hospital. And he said, I want you to say something about the man that I love the most in all of my life. And I said, Mike, what do you want me to say? And he said, Len, what can you say about a man that's your brother and you've known for 42 years and you're sure he's your friend. You've loved and you shared your entire life with. He touched me, Mike said, like no one else has ever lived. As most people in this room know, Mike and Eddie had a friendship that was awfully deep. And then he said, I'm going to tell you something that you will appreciate knowing I think everyone in this room will. He said, you know, when they found Eddie and he had a smile on his face and he'd been reading the newspaper, he said Lynn, I know he was laughing at the stock market. Ed Regan was a tremendous success as a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous which made him a tremendous success as a human being and as a man he has touched everyone in this room all of us in a different way to me Eddie was the type of person when I saw him in the distance I started to smile because I always felt good anytime I was around Eddie Regan he was an alcoholic and he's here in this room tonight I can feel it and I'm sure everyone else can too and what would he love more than to have the people he loved so much here participating in really what is an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting a memorial meeting whatever you want to call it but it's sober members of AlcoholicsAnonymous and other close and dear and beloved friends he gave me so much and I know he's given you the same and I will always remember him and love him for this thank you Elsie Fay Hi, I'm Elsie Faye Maroney I'm one of your kinfolk This gift that was thrust upon Eddie was taken well and it survived well because in order to keep something this precious, we have to give it away. And this, we all know, Eddie certainly did. I can't... There's just no way I can begin to tell you what Eddie meant in my life, so I'm not going to try. But I'm glad I'm here, and I'm glad all of you are here. And he's right here among all of us. I want to read you something that was sent from Texas and was requested that I read, so I'm going to do that now. This is a telegram I got this morning. It says, Horace Mann said, no man is ready to die until he has done something that will live forever. We can rest assured that dear Ed has left us a treasure, either eloquently written or tenderly expressed that will be with us as long as we live. So we say to the peacemaker of our society, have a good visit with your and our old friends from your many friends in Texas but more particularly Joe Leith and Harold Wilson. And when Ralph waits. I'm Ralph, an alcoholic. And one of Eddie's kids. I don't know how it came into my life, how he got to be my sponsor. I mean, at first, when he first started talking to me, I kept looking at him, wondering if this was for real, what he was saying to me. I mean... He... One of the first... We had a long talk sitting in his van one night. And he said, Ralph, after a long talk the thing that saved my life was when I found out that life is not a popularity contest and we've been sitting there for three hours and I thought to myself Jesus Christ I need this kind of I can get this in the Reader's Digest what am I sitting here what am i sitting here for with this guy but as the years and the months and months and the years passed that phrase began I'm not going to worry about crying because Jesus Christ he cried every other minute he cried he had tears in his eyes that night he taught me that I mean and it's come to mean an awful lot to me jeez i i don't uh he we we spent a lot of time together recently i went on a trip to um i couldn't believe this this man we went on a trip too i had to go to st louis to give a speech to an alcoholic conference and eddie came along and uh i was getting all this attention and all this you were right i never heard jack i never hurt i never knew a man ever, who never said anything bad about anybody. Never was critical, Jesus. Anyway, Eddie was everywhere. I mean, he had more friends in that town and I was the one who was giving the speech. And every time I looked around there were people gathered around me just they loved him as I loved them. And not only that but every time I'd look around he'd be off at some war memorial. He knew everything about the Civil War I discovered. Everything about the Civil war, not just a lot. Everything. I talked to him, I guess it was the day he died. He called me. I was in Ohio. I've been in Ohio and we talked and I'd been going through one of my numbers with my relationships in New York and it was a kind of a crisis thing although we never, we didn't, I didn't we talked we would laugh most of the time and the last thing he said to me last week was, look, Ralph, don't ask me for any advice, for Christ's sake. I'm awful at these things. But be as loving as you can and do your best. Now, I had to give up a lot of old ideas when I got here six and a half years ago. One of the ideas that Eddie taught me, one of the things I learned from him and from all of you, but mainly from him, was what it meant to be a man. I had a lot of screwed-up ideas about what it mean to be man. And when I looked at Eddie, I always thought, Jesus Christ, there's not only a man, there's a man I'd like to be like. There's a human being. Well, I don't know what a human is, there is a human. I don't like this, Eddie. But I'm not going to drink and I'll keep coming back and I love you. Thank you. John Lockie? I am John Lockie, an alcoholic. I have had some fabulous experiences on this AA program and AA way of life. And looking back, I can see I had very little to do with them. A lot of you people know that Eddie I don't think I think I was the last one to know that Eddie was my sponsor because Eddie just kind of kept talking and I kept nodding and I was ten years sober and happy and I had it made and my whole world came unglued. It fell apart. The bottom dropped out. Not alcoholism, but just living. And my sponsor has just died. Some people here tonight will remember him, the great noisy Jack Lomas. and I knew all the answers I'd been to AA for 10 years and everything was gone and it was shot and all I knew was that I couldn't drink that's the one thing I couldn' do so I started hanging out in Eddie's print shop He had a coffee pot in the back room. It was a very nice stationery store, and you go in the Back Room, and there's eight drunks back there drinking coffee. And I never picked him out to be my sponsor. It was an interesting thing. It was just a friendly thing. He knew I was hurting every day. He knew that I was in the chopper, and it was always the same. Stop in tomorrow. Stopping tomorrow. If there are any new people on the program that are shopping around or wondering whether a sponsor is necessary, I recommend them very highly because I had two great ones. I'm convinced we can't do this thing all by ourselves. Anyway, I can honestly say for two years that Eddie was my sponsor and I was in his shadow without even knowing it. And after the clouds cleared up and I decided it wasn't all over, it was only another beginning, Eddie was the guy that was the first one to tell me how great I was that I hadn't blown the whole thing. I don't think I can talk much longer because as an alcoholic, I was a blubberer and I'm getting pretty close to it now. But get yourself a sponsor like I had. Thank you. Thank you very much. Riley? Yeah. I'm Riley. I'm an alcoholic. Hi, Riley. I'd like to say hello to our guest of honor. Hi, Eddie. I wore these glasses. That might keep you from crying. We'll see. The first time I saw... The first thing I saw the first time that Eddie Regan asked me to his house I knocked on the door and he opened it and said come on in I was late getting home from work I've got to take a shower and I'll get you a cup of coffee and he said just follow me to the kitchen and I just stood at the door staring at him and he turned around and said well come on I said well I can't you're naked he would start naked and he looked and he reached over and he put on his sweatshirt the first time I blushed sober and he said he looked at me he said Riley we have no secrets in AA Eddie knew a little bit about everything, and a lot about a lot of things. And I've been asked, Riley, what did Eddie say to you when you went to him with a problem? And I said, well, two things. First, he told me that it wasn't my problems that bothered him, it was my solutions. And then he explained to me how many sacks of cement it took to build a Santa Ana freeway. Sack by sack. And I walked away absolutely overjoyed and thinking he was God. No problems anymore. Eddie Regan was everything to everybody, and he was an intimate friend to each of us. I love him as a father. I never had and I love him as a vulnerable sentimental wonderful Irishman that he was and I'll miss him as a sponsor who cried with me and laughed with me two drunks I came back from he loved me through them and And I want to, because God, I believe God and Alcoholics Anonymous and you people are all one, I want thank you for giving me Eddie Regan for 10 of the best, best years of my life. Thank you. Thank you very much. Clancy Emelsman. My name is Clancy Emmeslund, and I'm an alcoholic. I was thinking tonight, I've told this story, I used to tell it to Eddie a lot, but when I was brand new skulking around the 6300 Club, I looked terrible. Nobody who had any degree of decent sobriety would even talk to me. I didn't have any front teeth, andI smelled bad. and I was living in an abandoned car out in the parking lot at the time it was an AA club parking lot so there was a certain spiritual fallout and at that time my friend Eddie used to run around with a guy named Eddie Essid and they talked together a lot and I used to resent both of them terribly because Eddie Essad was kind of a black haired it doesn't happen very often but in my life that when i'm feeling bad about myself i stop and i'm concerned terribly about others when it does happen i know how good it works but off that one of the great epitomes of what alcoholics on us but i had no idea all i did i resent an old-timer who had it all together and uh he helped me because and he didn't even know me he helpedme because that's what aas do and in so doing he felt better and over the years i really gained a great deal of admiration and love for eddie and uh i don't suppose that ivor was in hollywood they didn't stop into that wretched print shop and watch lenny pick on him he was always out to lunch it seemed like no matter what time of day you got eddie's next door having lunch i used to lecture him on it but he didn't seem to respond and uh i uh another thing i always kind of i used to get angry with eddie about because most of my life i've had to fight a rather intolerant personality i mean i tolerate my own faults it's just other people that i have difficulties and uh nice to say how can you be so nice to these dummies you're working with give them give him hell he said yeah I got to do that the next time I say give him a hell yeah I gotta do that and he always was a he was so nice that unless you look closely you thought he was just a nothing just a zero guy but he uh he was a great guy remember a few years ago we put him on the board or he was elected on the Board of the directors of the West End properties which is Ohio Street And I thought he'd be a nice addition, kind of a stabilizing force. We're not going to do any printing, so there's nothing you can talk about. And we decided to buy some stocks for reserve, and he just staggered us all. He just whipped out his stock market talk, and my eyes went around like two babies in a saucer. And he bought some stocks. That's the kind of stock I have. I'm selling this, but I'm getting rid of this one. I don't know where the West End stands but it sure sounded good when he explained it to us a couple of months ago I was thinking about tonight because several people have mentioned that he never criticized anybody and you know, that's really true I never heard him I tried to get him to just to go along with what I was saying if nothing else and he would nod but there was no sincerity in it and he we're trying to get rid of the people who park in the Ohio Street parking lot all day because we need that for our purposes and Eddie got in charge he was going to get them out of there his job was to come by in the daytime say I'm going to get them I said are you sure now he said oh yeah I'm gonna get them and the parking lot overflowed again and I said to him at the next meeting why didn't you get rid of them he said well they they probably had reasons to have to be there and i said what is this come on be vicious how are you going to be hated if you're not vicious and i uh every every contact i had with him was a was a mellowing influence on me and i i guess the last day he was alive he was uh he spent the day in my backyard on saturday out in the yard and he was moodily working on a branch of a lemon tree that he was going to get to grow up somehow he didn't explain how but he just he'd been over there several times studying it and laughing at keeping everybody happy around him and uh i uh And the next day, I guess he went to sleep with a smile, which isn't bad. I don't feel like crying when I think of Eddie. I don' t even feel like cryin'. I miss his presence very much, but I think that probably the greatest reward I know that you can get in this world, because most of us have seen people who have lived and died in difficult streets. he lived well and the most the greatest gift god can give anybody is to die well and comfortably since we're all going to die it isn't as though he's been one selected and the rest of us live we're always going to and i hope to god i die with a smile on my face and a paper in my hand i'll tell you and i uh i don't know it's so corny to talk about and i hate corny things right you know they always talk about that corny old meeting in the sky that go to the big meeting in the sky I was thinking about that now driving over I'm sure if I should ever be fortunate enough to get to such a meeting in this guy I'll probably have to sleep in an abandoned car for a number of years but if I get there I know that if it's run the way I wanted to run there'll be a big desk and old Sullivan will be smoothing his bald head looking wise at everybody and over a booth eddie in his sweatshirt will have some newcomer cornered so you can't get out you know i want to get he got you he gotcha and watching the newcomer and you knew eddie was going to keep talking telly until he was willing to stay and he just there was no way out i uh tonight before i came over i looked over it i i probably am wrong and it's probably a romanticized idea but i look tonight and it looked to me like that damn lemon tree branch was growing up so uh wherever he is he's still working on it thank you jenny gates hi my name is jenna gates and i'm an alcoholic Hi. And I'm just so happy we're all here. Everybody's been talking about the things that are most important to me about my friend Eddie. He was my best friend. He was just my best and I know why he talked so much. I finally asked him. I couldn't stand it anymore. I just said, but how can you help anybody if you keep talking? Why don't you ever listen to what they're... you know. And he said because if they're afraid to talk and share with you, if you keep insisting on talking they'll break in. They'll insist upon breaking in and getting something said and that's how he got your secrets out of you. That's how we did that. I didn't know that. You know, I thought you had to listen as if you cared. He learned that that wasn't so he was my best friend and i just loved him and he saved my life repeatedly and he was always there um i run that committee too uh and i have it's true he's a wonderfully spiritual man but i i remember my friend lurking outside of convention banquet hallways and doorways with pockets filled with tickets and uh he always bought 100 tickets because he says we have to take care of our friends you know he says those people that don't know him we have to take of them and he took care of his friends um i know that i know i'm just one of a lot of those friends he took of in this room um he wasn't found you know for several days that's because we all just figured he was doing one of his things that he was saying here's one place and was really another and that's why we couldn't reach him um i it made me laugh a few months before he uh i'd wanted to take a trip someplace and i didn't um i said i don't know whether i should go or not and i don' t know what i want to say i'm going away for a few days and i don''t know if i should go to cleveland or not should i go to Cleveland and he said well I don't know he said when I'm going to go to Cleveland I tell myself I'm coming I'm not going to Minneapolis you know that was a very human man he said the only thing you had to do was keep breathing in and out he said I was like Clancy I tried to get him to take my side when someone was being unjust to me once in a while I tried to get them to agree with me that uh that was so and he couldn't do it he said imagine me doing that you know imagine me criticizing anybody for anything with all the things i've done imagine me doing that he just didn't do that um i want to say another thing because i know the family um i know The Girls and um and Eddie gave us a lot of uh which should have been theirs because his life depended upon it and I remember I I resented my mother who had left me when I was very young I resended my mother working for the Lighthouse for the Blind in New Orleans and getting calls in the middle of the night and giving her time and attention to them I wanted that attention I said why do you do that why do spend all your time with those people and my mother said to me I wasn't there to take care of you girls when you needed me so i figure it's my business to take care of the children that god puts in front of me and somewhere down the line there'll be a group of people who'll take care of you and that i remembered that when i was about eight months sober and eddie was one of those people like like you who took care of me and i know we're all here for the girls we want to share our love with you and thank you for your daddy no walter king my name is Walter King I'm a recovering alcoholic I happen to know Eddie from the first time he came in I was close to Eddie in a lot of respects I used to have that with him and he's an non-alcoholic brother we would have our Monday morning coffee break at the print shop and he lifted me a lot of times because I'm a guy that's highly sensitive, nervous pops off the handle tell you off right now build up a lot of resentments and he used to keep a pretty level key on me of course he got it from one of the old teachers too but I like to remember best the last few days that I talked with Eddie not too long ago a week or ten days ago when I called him to come up and speak at our Sunday morning breakfast in Oxnard and he was telling me what he was doing and I could tell and feel the happiness he says, you guess what? I said, what Eddie? He says, I've been reinstated to the guild He says, I thought I might have trouble getting in there. He says no trouble at all. And he was very happy. He was working on some script of them. He said, I'm going to do some work on some commercial stuff. And I says, fine, Eddie, that's great. And he says, I'm doing it. I'm saying, I'll put you down for a Sunday. So we made it after Labor Day. In the meantime, somebody come into the office and a woman was impatient and she wanted some books and literature in a hurry. And I said, Eddie, I got a cash customer on the line. He says, for God's sakes, take care of her. Goodbye, I'll see you later. This is the way I like to remember Eddie. God bless you. Applause And Chuck Chamberlain. I am Chuck Segan, I'm an alcoholic. Hi. I think the only inconsiderate thing I've ever known Eddie Regan to do was to check out just a month before the Desert Roundup. We needed him so bad. He was really Elsie Fay's right and left hand. He did more for that committee than all the rest of us put together, except Elsie Say. and that's the only inconsiderate thing I've ever known him to do Eddie Regan made this program you see we don't make this program until we die sober so Eddie died sober he made the program and in my opinion even now he is a member of our celestial group Now, I haven't any idea where that is. I think I do have an idea too, but it don't fit with a lot of ideas. But it occurred to me when they were walking around on the moon that from anyplace else in the firmament. Our globe is not a terrestrial globe at all, it's celestial from the moon. This is a celestial deal and it's the prettiest one of the bunch. Because when I got this little inspiration, the next thing I knew I was sitting in the curve of the moon up they're looking at it and so I don't know as we care what the place is but he is now a member of our celestial group along with many whom he loves so much It has been written that if, when it comes our time to go, one person calls us friend, we have not lived in vain. Now Jenny said something about being here for the girls and the family. It should be a source of much comfort to Eddie's family that his friends were legion, legion. For instance in the last few days I have gotten calls from Canada, from the East Coast, from south, many calls from Texas and so Eddie's turned to a legion. I don't believe that anybody could have known Eddie and not love him. He was the most lovable guy in the world and he was so confidential. He's the only man I've ever known that could talk to me for an hour and never get that far away from my left ear. It was sort of like secretive, but he was He was with everybody, so it wasn't just me. That's the way Eddie was. He was told by his first sponsor that he shouldn't come to the Beverly Hills Group because I happen to remember the Beverly Hill Group and his first sponsored didn't think I'd be good for him. So he bootlegged a few meetings. He'd come out there and spend a little time with us. And so I've known him pretty much from the first two. He and Mike were the Siamese twins for me, and I just loved everything about him. You know, it's strange how this society of ours works. We become color blind, race blind, creed blind and religion blind here. And after many years of knowing both Eddie and Mike, Mike came down and talked at the club in Laguna Beach, the Canyon Club. got up there and said he was Jewish. And when he came down, he was sitting with me in the audience, and when he come down I said, Mike, why in the world do you want to lie to these people? Well, he said, what do you mean? Well, I said you said you're Jewish. Well, he says I am! Now, I'd been knowing him for all that time, and it never occurred to me that there was anything but AA you know and here we're Jewish too and so is Eddie I happen to be one who doesn't believe in death I think there's transition I think we surrender from one plane to the next and we die from one room to the nest just a matter of translation and I think that of all of us here in this room tonight all of us each one of us Eddie is better off than any of us better off than any of us so my my love for Eddie and my joy for Eddie is that he not only lived with a smile he died with a smile I love his memory I love him I love family and I love all of you and some of these days you and I we hope all of us will make the program about Horace Nance thank you Just a very brief personal word. I did not identify myself as the other people who participated. Some of you might think I'm attached to this local institution. My name is Terry, and I'm an alcoholic. and I was treated one time by Eddie after having asked him a question. He picked me up at the rectory of Immaculate Conception Parish in a very old, dirty Pontiac and drove me at 20 miles an hour on the coast highway to Oxnard where he got lost and we drove back at 20 miles an hour and he never stopped talking. And I will never forget the love in him. I know that his family is represented here, and I know he gave himself to so many, but so often in AA families people feel almost bereft. They go out to other people, and there's no way that everyone here can speak to everyone in the family. It's kind of impossible. And I'm very confident I can speak in the name of every member of Alcoholics Anonymous, of our deep feeling of sympathy and love and gratitude to you. Especially to Sharon and Carol and Diane. And in the family's name, Carol will say a few words. my name is carol reagan and i'm an alcoholic's daughter a lot of things have been said here tonight about my father and i am certain that he is wherever he is laughing as much as we all are one of the funniest things i think that we all can relate to is my father's ability to talk your ear off. I thought about it a lot, and it's my opinion that the reason he did that was he wanted to exhaust you until you stopped thinking about whatever it was that was bothering you, and were so relieved when he stopped talking that all of a sudden your problems didn't seem like very much. on behalf of my two sisters and my brothers, I mean my uncles and my father's sister Loretta I want to thank you all for all that you gave to him and therefore gave to us and we remember it and think of it a lot Thank you And I know there are very many more people who could share love and your wisdom in a beautiful way. But that's all we figure we could get together for this memorial service. I would like to close before we pray together our prayer we always pray at the end of meetings I would like to read another passage that pertains to the gift that we've been talking about. This is from Matthew's Gospel, and the king is speaking to those, to the sheep on the last day. And he said, Come, you have my Father's blessing. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you give me drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me. Naked and you clothed me. I was ill and you comforted me in prison and you came to visit me. then the just will ask him Lord when did we see you hungry and feed you or see you thirsty and give you drink when didwe welcome you away from home or clothe you in your nakedness when did we visit you when you were ill or in prison the king will answer them I assure you as often as you did it for one of these my least brothers or sisters you didit for me I think the fitting thing would be for us to stand and say the Lord's Prayer together Our Father who art in heaven hallowed be thy name thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and give us not this invitation but deliver us from evil for now and at the age of the Lord and in the glory forever. Amen. Thank you.