{"id":94,"date":"2012-11-03T17:54:08","date_gmt":"2012-11-03T22:54:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stevenmarchi.org\/?p=94"},"modified":"2012-11-03T17:54:08","modified_gmt":"2012-11-03T22:54:08","slug":"eulogy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevenmarchi.org\/?p=94","title":{"rendered":"Eulogy"},"content":{"rendered":"
\u201cA heart is not judged by how much you love, but by how much you are loved by others.\u201d<\/em>
\n-The Wizard of Oz<\/address>\n

A childhood friend of ours shared the following observation with me.\u00a0 \u201cHe was a very good friend who I have always known and thought of as a good person with a kind heart and a desire to do well by others.\u00a0 In my experience he was never mean or spiteful or judgmental of others and that is not really all that common.\u201d<\/p>\n

His entire life, Steve sought to be recognized, accepted and appreciated.\u00a0 He would make a plan, find a group of friends to build that stage of his life around, and try to achieve his goal.\u00a0 During that time, the network of friends would sustain him through those efforts.\u00a0 He gave freely in return for that.\u00a0 He has been described as being entirely selfless; he would give you the shirt off his back if you needed it.\u00a0 As time passed with each group, he would come to the natural challenges that serve as tests and barriers to achieving dreams.\u00a0 Invariably his friends would, as his family had in the past, question the path, or offer advice.\u00a0 And then things would change.\u00a0 Steve didn\u2019t take criticism very well.\u00a0 Even if you didn\u2019t question his goal, if you challenged the manner in which he was pursuing it, he backed away. \u00a0Time and again throughout his life, I watched him treat those questions as betrayals.\u00a0 He would pack up and move on, resurfacing months or even years later in a new group, with a new plan in place.\u00a0 Each time he moved, he rebuilt that life around himself.\u00a0 He found loving, supportive people, and he touched their lives in the process.\u00a0 And they supported.\u00a0 And they accepted.\u00a0 But ultimately, they questioned \u2026 and he moved on.\u00a0 If there is one tragic footnote to my brother\u2019s life, it would be this:\u00a0 he never realized that he had already found the acceptance he craved – repeatedly.\u00a0\u00a0 Over and over, time and time again, he rebooted his life and recreated his perfect world, and then ran away from it when it threatened to engulf him in questions, doubt or commitment.\u00a0 I don\u2019t believe my brother ever understood the extent to which he touched people\u2019s lives.\u00a0 I don\u2019t believe he ever recognized the depth of the love and concern he brought out in people.\u00a0 He wanted unconditional acceptance, and never understood that the world doesn\u2019t work that way.<\/p>\n

Maybe Steve had it right though.\u00a0 Maybe that\u2019s why he found such ready acceptance time and again.\u00a0 There was something in his message that people recognized; perhaps even something they wished was true.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cA heart is not judged by how much you love, but by how much you are loved by others.\u201d -The Wizard of Oz A childhood friend of ours shared the following observation with me.\u00a0 \u201cHe was a very good friend … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-memorium"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevenmarchi.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevenmarchi.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevenmarchi.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevenmarchi.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevenmarchi.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=94"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevenmarchi.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":95,"href":"https:\/\/stevenmarchi.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94\/revisions\/95"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevenmarchi.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=94"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevenmarchi.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=94"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevenmarchi.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=94"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}