Eulogy

I have two memories of the Church—both of which are embarrassing. The first was during my First Communion, which is third of the seven sacraments where someone first receives the Eucharist (the body and blood of Jesus). For the ceremony, my parents dressed me in a terribly fit suit and at that age I was missing both of my front teeth—I looked ridiculous. Sometime during the ceremony I accidentally blew out my candle. I look around and every other kid still has their candle lit so I tried to fake it by hovering my hand around the top of the candle, pretending to protect the flame. I can hear my family chuckle behind me. I waited until the rest of the kids began blowing out their candles, then I just blew into my hand extinguishing the “invisible-flame.”
Luckily, my parents aren’t very strict followers, though. We didn’t go to church every week, but my parents wanted their kids to learn about the word of God. So my sisters and I were sent to a religious education class when we were in elementary and middle school. It wasn’t fun and I don’t think it was meant to be fun; the class had homework, projects, and quizzes and tests. But by the time I was in eighth grade, I had no desire to complete the next step of my church journey: Confirmation. Confirmation is where one is admitted as a full member of the church and my church wanted me jumping through hoops in order to be admitted. I didn’t think it was worth the effort.
My sisters completed their confirmation, so I was the only one in my family to never complete it. My parents still wanted me to go through the process of being Confirmed, but I didn’t. I wanted to separate myself from the church, and religion as a whole. Religion, in my opinion, is something of the past. Those who lived thousands of years ago had no answers to the things in their lives. Things like sunrise and sunset and seasons and anything similar. Today, those questions have been answered by science. And because my views conflicted with the word of God, I wanted no