Celebration of Life
I’m Dr. Toni LaMotta, and it is my honor to to Welcome you all to Sal Gaeta’s Celebration of life. Today, we honor Sal whom many have known as a loved one and true friend in every sense of the word.
We are also here to give consolation, comfort and support to Toni and to their children – Lisa, Steven, Michael…. Etc.
We affirm this memorial to be one of beauty, inspiration and comfort, and we join in this tribute NOT with a sense of loss, but with the thought that out of this memorial experience there comes something very precious, something that is, to each one here, a guiding light and eternal promise as we allow Sal to continue to inspire and give us joy through sharing memories of his life.
And, perhaps of greatest importance, we are here to deepen our awareness of life as eternal and immortal and to affirm our faith in God and in the Good that we know is in store for Sal now.
I’d like to officially open today’s service by playing one of Sal’s favorite songs – which I’m sure he meant to sing to Toni and perhaps to each of us here today
Let the vibration lift your spirits as we come today to celebrate his life!
Whatever good Sal gave to you, you still retain. It still lives with you and works for you. So what we are doing here today is celebrating his life, rather than mourning his passing. We are celebrating his love, his example and all of the wonderful, individual ways in which he touched all of us.
As each of you uphold the vision and memory of Sal with a firm belief that good expands and spiritual growth is unending, then it becomes easier for you to free her spirit. Envision him as being radiant, healthy, whole, complete and at peace with the serenity that comes from the soul’s onward progression into greater good and rejoice with him in the promise that he has found.
In this attitude we then bless Sal with our love and support as she continues life’s journey in spiritual unfoldment.
Now, I invite you to take a moment and bring Sal’s spirit to your consciousness. I know that some of you never got to say goodbye and there might have been something you wanted to say… Take a moment now in silence to speak those words to him…For his Spirit is here and now and always present to us…
SILENCE
And, now take a moment and listen As ??? reads the words he might have said in return… a poem by Pete Gray.
Don’t cry for me. There is no need.
IF you did not say you loved me often…
I saw it in your eyes, Felt it in your touch,
Sensed it in our times together, even in the rush of Busyness
If I did not pledge my love enough…Forgive me.
The love was always there. Even when we were apart.
Even when we disagreed, I thought you always knew.
Don’t cry for me.
I chose this life to learn and play, and life’s been full
of such a wealth of times. of joy, of growth, laughter and pain.
Experience upon experience… To overflow the memory, And overwhelm the mind. I would not change a day of it Except to say “I Love you” one more time.
Don’t cry for me… For where I’ve gone
IT is my choice to go. My task is done, my lessons learned,
My heart at peace.
So laugh with me, and raise a toast, and tell a joke.
And soon, your lessons learned, Your task complete,
We’ll pledge our love again.
And now I’d like to play a song that I believe is the way Sal would have us all remember him.
Someone has said that, “When we are born into this life, we die to another life. But we bring with us into this life all the creative potential to grow and flourish, to be happy and productive in this world. And likewise when we die to this life, we are born into another life, and carry with us into that life all we have learned in this one, and all the goodness we have experienced.”
We only can know people by what they give us. Not in a material sense but in the realm of the physical or the material but in the realm of the spirit of who they are. What came from Sal who we honor and whose life we celebrate today.
I now invite ??? up to give a Eulogy –and then we’ll all share memories of Sal.
I now encourage Toni to come and share her memories with us – followed by ???? and then by anyone else who wishes to share.
RITUAL FOR SAYING GOODBYE TO Sal
And now, it is time for us to symbolically say goodbye to Sal as we have known her in this physical world. But we also keep alive her spirit, her soul and her memory in our hearts, surrounded by love which can never die and which can never be taken from us.
We give thanks, not only for what Sal gave to each of us, but for what he was in truth and in Spirit, a wonderful expression of life. He truly made a loving difference in the quality of our lives.
A FINAL READING: ETERNAL VISION By J. Sig Paulson
“They know me not, who think that I am only flesh and blood… a transient dweller on this fragile spaceship earth that gave me human birth.
FOR I AM SPIRIT eternal, indestructible, not confined to space or time. And when my sojourn here is through, my roles fulfilled, my assignments done, I will lay aside this spacesuit called my body and move on to other mansions, roles, assignments in our father’s house of eternal life.
SO DRY YOUR TEARS, weep not overmuch for me, or for yourself. Set me free, in the love that holds us all and makes us one eternally.
OUR PATHS will cross again, our minds and hearts will touch. Our souls will shout with joy and laughter as we recall the lives we’ve lived, the worlds we’ve seen, the ways we’ve trod, to find ourselves at last in God.
And so it shall ever be. And so it is. Amen
Closing with Let There Be Peace on Earth