Give Your Best To the People Who will Cry the Deepest at Your Funeral & Those Whom You will Weep at Theirs

As we grow older, one realization settles into the heart with increasing clarity: the people who matter most are rarely asking us for grand gestures. They are asking for presence. They remember the conversations where we listened without checking the time. They remember the unexpected visits, the reassuring embraces, the laughter shared over simple meals, the phone calls that began with *"Kamusta ka?"* and ended much later than expected because no one was in a hurry to say goodbye.

In Filipino families, love has always carried an unspoken language. It is found in a mother quietly cutting fruit after dinner without being asked. It is in a father waking before dawn so the household can wake to a better tomorrow. It is in siblings teasing one another endlessly but becoming each other's fiercest defenders when life becomes difficult. It is in grandparents waiting patiently for children and grandchildren who have become busy building lives of their own. These acts rarely become viral stories or dramatic moments, yet they quietly build the relationships that carry us through the rest of our lives.

 

There is a quiet exercise that changes the way we look at the people around us. It asks no extraordinary intelligence, no wealth, no influence—only honesty. Imagine, for a moment, the people who would cry the deepest at your funeral. Then imagine the people whose passing would leave you unable to find the right words, whose empty chair at the dinner table or familiar voice on the other end of the phone would become an ache that time never fully erases. Those people deserve the very best version of you.

It is remarkable how easily we reserve our patience for strangers while unintentionally spending our impatience on those who love us most. We smile politely at colleagues, thank cashiers for their service, and extend kindness to acquaintances, yet we sometimes answer our parents with hurried replies, postpone conversations with our siblings, overlook our spouse's quiet need for affection, or assume that our closest friends will always understand our absence. Familiarity has a subtle way of convincing us that tomorrow will always be available. Life, however, has never made such a promise.

The tragedy is not that love disappears. The tragedy is that people often realize its depth only after absence introduces itself. We buy flowers that can no longer be smelled. We speak words of gratitude that can no longer be heard. We remember birthdays after calendars have become memorials. Regret has a cruel habit of arriving when opportunities have already departed.

This is why the people who will cry the deepest at your funeral deserve more than your leftover energy. They deserve your best conversations while your voice is still strong enough to speak them. They deserve your forgiveness before pride hardens into silence. They deserve your time before schedules become excuses. They deserve your affection while they are still able to receive it.

The same is true in the other direction. If there are people whose passing would leave you weeping, do not wait for grief to teach you their value. Tell them they matter while they are here. Visit them while the road still leads to their home. Sit with them over coffee that grows cold because the conversation has become more important than the drink itself. Celebrate ordinary days together, because one day those ordinary moments will become the extraordinary memories you revisit for comfort.

Success will always have another milestone. Work will always produce another deadline. Money can always be earned again. The people we love, however, move through time only once. Every shared meal, every family gathering, every unplanned conversation is quietly becoming history while we are living it.

One day, all of us will attend a funeral where the tears feel heavier than expected. One day, others will stand before ours carrying memories that only they can tell. When that day comes, our greatest legacy will not be the titles after our names or the possessions we accumulated. It will be the kindness we consistently gave, the love we made visible, and the lives that became gentler simply because we were part of them.

Give your best to the people who will cry the deepest at your funeral. Give your best to the people from whom you know your own tears will freely fall. In the end, those relationships will prove to be the truest measure of a life well lived, because while achievements may be remembered, it is love that will always be mourned—and even more importantly, love that will always be cherished long after we are gone.

-Othello