Speech for the wake of Grandmother Spirit

Task: Write a thrilling speech for the wake of Grandmother Spirit.

“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”, once a wise woman said.

We won’t forget Grandmother Spirit, we won’t forget how she gave us advices, how she told us her stories and we won’t forget how special she made us feel.

Me, as a Spokane Indian, don’t have a lot of things in life that I can appreciate, I don’t have a lot of things that are valuable. But grandmother Spirit didn’t think about those kind of things. She tried to teach us the really important things in life. Shouldn’t we then try to change our life, to change our way of thinking? Why did we stop to fight, why did we give up? Because you, because me, because we all think that there is no hope!? But there is, somewhere out there, there is hope.

We lost an inspiring, great woman today. Not because of her age, or because she was sick. No, we lost her because somebody out there without hope, tried to reduce his problems by drinking alcohol, by loosing his whole control.

That could have been you, that can be you. Now, I want to ask. Do you really want to be responsible for someone’s dead because you didn’t have yourself under control? Because you didn’t have your life under control? Is that what you want?

So, let’s take a lesson from Grandmother Spirit’s tragedy and focus on our lives. Let’s learn to have hope again. And let us all appreciate Grandmother Spirit’s love.

Thank you.