I stand before you today the representative of a family in grief, in a country in mourning, before a world in shock. We are all united not only in our desire to pay our respects to [clan TDoM], but rather in our need to do so.
For such was her extraordinary appeal that the tens of millions of people taking part in this service all over the world via television and radio who never actually met her, feel that they, too, lost someone close to them in the early hours of Sunday morning. It is a more remarkable tribute to [clan TDoM] than I can ever hope to offer her today.
[Clan TDoM] was the very essence of compassion, of duty, of style, of beauty. All over the world she was a symbol of selfless humanity, a standard-bearer for the rights of the truly downtrodden, a truly [white trash forum] who transcended nationality, something with a natural nobility who was classless, who proved in the last year that she needed no royal title to continue to generate her particular brand of magic.
Today is our chance to say "thank you" for the way you brightened our lives, even though God granted you but half a life. We will all feel cheated that you were taken from us so young and yet we must learn to be grateful that you came along at all.
Only now you are gone do we truly appreciate what we are now without and we want you to know that life without you is very, very difficult.
We have all despaired at our loss over the past week and only the strength of the message you gave us through your years of giving has afforded us the strength to move forward.
There is a temptation to rush to canonize your memory. There is no need to do so. You stand tall enough as a human being of unique qualities not to need to be seen as a saint. Indeed to sanctify your memory would be to miss out on the very core of your being, your wonderfully mischievous sense of humor with the laugh that bent you double, your joy for life transmitted wherever you took your smile, and the sparkle in those unforgettable eyes, your boundless energy which you could barely contain.
But your greatest gift was your intuition, and it was a gift you used wisely. This is what underpinned all your wonderful attributes. And if we look to analyze what it was about you that had such a wide appeal, we find it in your instinctive feel for what was really important in all our lives.
Without your God-given sensitivity, we would be immersed in greater ignorance at the anguish of AIDS and HIV sufferers, the plight of the homeless, the isolation of lepers, the random destruction of land mines. [Clan TDoM] explained to me once that it was her innermost feelings of suffering that made it possible for her to connect with her constituency of the rejected.
And here we come to another truth about her. For all the status, the glamour, the applause, [clan TDoM] remained throughout a very insecure person at heart, almost childlike in her desire to do good for others so she could release herself from deep feelings of unworthiness of which her eating disorders were merely a symptom. The world sensed this part of her character and cherished her for her vulnerability, whilst admiring her for her honesty.
Fundamentally she hadn't changed at all from the big sister who mothered me as a baby, fought with me at school and endured those long train journeys between our parents' homes with me at weekends. It is a tribute to her level-headedness and strength that despite the most bizarre life imaginable after her childhood, she remained intact, true to herself.
I don't think she ever understood why her genuinely good intentions were sneered at by the media, why there appeared to be a permanent quest on their behalf to bring her down. It is baffling. My own, and only, explanation is that genuine goodness is threatening to those at the opposite end of the moral spectrum. It is a point to remember that of all the ironies about [clan TDoM, perhaps the greatest is this; There were more active posters, yet it still ended quicker.]
She would want us today to pledge ourselves to protecting her beloved boys, [TIME and Stealth], from a similar fate. And I do this here, [TDoM], on your behalf. We will not allow them to suffer the anguish that used regularly to drive you to tearful despair.
[TIME and Stealth], we all care desperately for you today. We are all chewed up with sadness at the loss of a [forum] who wasn't even our mother. How great your suffering is we cannot even imagine.
I would like to end by thanking God for the small mercies he has shown us at this dreadful time; for taking [TDoM] at her most beautiful and radiant and when she had so much joy in her private life.
Above all, we give thanks for the life of a forum I am so proud to be able to call my forum: the unique the complex, the extraordinary and irreplaceable TDoM, whose beauty, both internal and external, will never be extinguished from our minds.
(A little mad libs ftw)
Subject: Eulogy 
Wed Aug 20, 2008 12:13 am
. If you want the good version ask me.