My friend Jason Akers passed away last Sunday. His wife Christine asked me to speak at his memorial service. I tried to memorialize him in a respectful, heartfelt way. It was very hard to talk because of my profound sense of loss, but I managed to get through it. Since learning of his death, I've kind of been in a somber mood. This loss has been an affirmation of my knowledge of how fragile my existence is and of the importance of living in the moment. So here is my funeral talk.
Jason and I were friends.
I was very open about my life and he was open about his. As such, we would sometimes discuss very
personal matters. Because I opened up to
him and he to me, I came to have a sense of who he was and what was important
to him. I felt privileged that he
trusted me enough to share his inner thoughts and feelings. Whenever he would open up with me, I felt I
was on sacred ground. I came to really
understand this man, my friend.
As he pondered his mortality and impending death, we would
sometimes talk about his life on a macro scale.
In other words, we talked about what he felt he had accomplished and
hadn’t accomplished, and what he had become and what he hadn’t become. He lamented to me that he felt that there was
so much he hadn’t accomplished and hadn’t become, and that he was trying not to
be bitter about being deprived of the balance of a lifetime to accomplish and
become.
I would like to share with you this solemn day what I saw
that he had accomplished and what he had become. And even though ultimately his life was cut
even shorter than he expected, I would propose that he leaves a legacy of
accomplishment and becoming.
Accomplishing in life does not necessarily equate to becoming. A person can be very accomplished in their
work or career, or even in responsibilities in their church congregations,
without becoming a good individual with good values and character. Jason would say that he didn’t accomplish
much. I choose to focus on what he became, and I only wish (and I’m sure he
would agree) that he had been given more time to become even more.
The first becoming I would like to share is how he became a
good and caring man. It would be a great
understatement to say that His upbringing was challenging. He would sometimes share with me how his family
of origin was full of dysfunction and abuse and it would have been easy for
him, and understandable for him, frankly, to live in that dysfunctional world
for the rest of his life. Instead, he
made the choice to escape it and to try to have a meaningful life. He used his upbringing as a bad example, as
something not to allow himself or his family to become. Sometimes, that can be a huge motivation for
us and it certainly appeared to be a great incentive for good in him. He became a caring man. I marvel at how he was able to become so
caring. I knew he was a caring man
because he cared for me, and I will always hold that caring in my heart.
The second becoming I am witness to is how he overcame
challenges and adversity. He was blessed
with a dogged determination, or even, a stubbornness of spirit. Perhaps his family would occasionally see a
stubborn father or husband, but that same tenacity was useful in stoically
sticking with changes he wanted to make in himself. Once Jason put his mind to do something, it
was eventually going to happen if it were in his control. He obviously had many challenges and
adversity, especially near the end of his life.
But for me, his determination was something to behold. I have learned more about determination from
his example than I have learned from just about any other person.
The third becoming would be how important his family came to
be for him. Having had such a
challenging childhood, with an absence of family role models other than a
kindly grandmother, he could have believed that life’s cards were stacked
against him and given up. But being the
fighter that he was, he determined to give his children what he had not
received. Did he always do the right
thing in his child rearing? Nobody
always makes the right decisions in the excruciatingly difficult job of raising
children, except for God. But he tried
the best that he could. His intention
was be the best father possible. He
would tell me how deeply he cared for Aaron and Linnet and Mallory. Christine was his childhood sweetheart and
the key to a more normal family life than what he had experienced. She was and is very important to him. And now
that he is in heaven, I must think that he deeply misses them all.
The fourth becoming I would like to touch on was his great,
insatiable thirst for knowledge. He
always seemed to be reading something.
He never seemed to get enough. He
loved to learn and anybody who talked with Jason for any length of time would
soon understand that he was well-read. He
could wax eloquent on any number of subjects and not superficially. He was always open to new ideas, new
concepts, new ways of looking at things.
Even in the last difficult time of his life, he seemed hungry to know
about what was happening to him. It is a
humble person who realizes that he or she does not know it all and wants to
become better informed, and Jason personified that humility. I have to believe that part of Christine’s
attraction to Jason was that desire to learn more and use that knowledge to
benefit himself, his family, and others.
Living each day to the fullest would be the next becoming I
perceived. This was something that
became important to Jason in the last few years of his life. He came to appreciate being alive and being
completely aware of those around him. He
grieved over not having been more awake and cognizant of each day. Especially at the very end, when he knew that
his time here on earth was drawing to a close, he sincerely wanted to enjoy
each day and to experience life as fully as his failing body would allow. His pain would sometimes get the best of him,
but that determination and positivity would kick in. No wonder that he went to Disneyland last
Friday. That alone speaks volumes.
Lastly, the becoming that might be the most important was his
embrace of the Gospel plan. Even though
he was quick to downplay his knowledge of Gospel doctrine and scriptures, he
knew that what he had been taught was true and eternally important. He believed in the power of prayer. He knew that Heavenly Father lived, that
Jesus was His Son, and that the Savior had performed the Atonement, and Jason
was determined to live Gospel principles the best way he could. He took pride in belonging to the Church, and
dearly wanted his children to be blessed by its teachings.
So you and I are left with this great legacy of this good
man. Funerals are not for those who’ve
passed on but for those who remain. What
shall do we with his life? Or perhaps more
importantly, what shall we become because of Jason Akers? Shall we not be more good and caring? Shall we not overcome adversity and challenge
with dogged determination as he did? Shall
we not hold our families close to us and put them as the highest priority in
our lives? Shall we not hunger and
thirst after knowledge? Shall we not
live each day as if it were our last—because it might be? Jason’s untimely death reminds us of that
fact. And finally, shall we not seek
truth and determine what God’s plan is for us?
Let us hold close and sacred his memory and allow those
memories to influence us to be better people—better parents, better children,
better citizens, better disciples of God.
What will be said by others at our funerals of our becoming when we pass
through the veil and embrace Jason?
