Claudia O’Sullivan
Integration Three
March 4, 2022
Long Live the Queen
EULOGY:
	Although life clearly stopped loving her when she got hit by that blimp and tragically passed away, Claudia always loved life. She loved her family more than anything on Earth, which includes all of her friends because she always said that family wasn’t just blood. For the majority of her life, she tried to limit her phone usage to only phone calls because she wanted to hear the voices of her loved ones, rather than see photos of them on social media. Claudia grew up in Miami, FL, and loved spending time outside in the water, hanging with her loved ones, and spending time with her grandparents. After highschool, Claudia studied philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. After she graduated, she packed her bags and took her talent to the Big Apple. She worked at an institute at NYU studying the various challenges humanity will face in the future, and how we can solve them together as a race. These plaguing questions combined with the chaos of NY led Claudia to spiral and move to Wyoming to work on a farm for a couple of years. She journaled everyday while she worked on the farm with the little piglets and cows, and eventually released her entries in a book. The book was pretty bad and performed overwhelmingly poorly. That summer, she went to the Lollapalooza Music Festival with her best friends, and she remembered that music is one of the biggest sources of joy in her life. She realized that billions of people must feel the same way, so she decided to create a non-profit to use music to help senior citizens and cancer patients who are emotionally struggling by helping them form connections with others using music. She created music festivals for senior citizens that were free of charge, with people who could assist them in transportation and moving around. Doing this non-profit made her feel so connected to her grandparents, and it really brought their legacy to life. She did similar events for children battling cancer in hospitals. While planning one of these events in Nashville, she met her husband. They immediately fell in love, but it was really difficult because they both traveled. However, in all of that fighting, they somehow made it work, and they got married in Puerto Rico two years later. They moved to Miami and had 3 beautiful, sweet kids, Beto, Isabel, and Eliza. While raising them, Claudia worked less, but still made enough time weekly to make sure the non-profit was doing well. Once her youngest, Isabel, went to college, she and her husband traveled around the world surfing, doing mission trips, and eating delicious food. They spent their retirement years between Miami, Gasparilla Island (a small island outside of Florida), and Europe until she tragically got hit by a blimp. Claudia made countless, countless mistakes throughout her life, but she always cared. She will be missed.
REFLECTION:
I believe that this eulogy describes a life well-lived for me because it includes love, service, and I never did anything that I didn’t believe in. I hope that, whenever I hit my lows, I don’t stop persevering and spending every day trying to follow my heart and do what’s right. As Boyle said, “in order to do good, we need memory, we need courage and we need creativity.” (“Tattoos on the Heart” by Greg Boyle - Moreau FYE Week Seven) I hope that I never forget how passionate I am about spending a great part of my life devoting myself to the elderly and people battling cancer, and I hope that I have the courage and creativity to take a risk and incorporate that pursuit with music, or something else that I love. I really hope that I do follow through and spend as little time as possible on my phone because “the more we can contact others, the more, it sometimes seems, we lose contact with ourselves.” (“Why we need to slow down our lives” by Pico Iyer - Moreau FYE Week One) I don’t want to lose touch with myself because then I can’t love others properly. I mentioned in my eulogy how my grandparents were really important to me growing up, and how that non-profit I theoretically did helped me feel connected to them. My biggest fear in the whole world is them passing away because I don’t know how I would ever be able to cope with that. But I hope that when it happens, I take all of that sadness and turn it into motivation for bringing their legacy to life. I don’t want that heartbreak to debilitate me because I don’t want the “purpose of my life [to be] simply about overcoming suffering” (“The right way to be introspective” by Tasha Eurich - Moreau FYE Week Six). I hope that, throughout my life, I always make sure to stand up for what’s just like Fr. Hesburgh did. I hope to have a fraction of the courage and morality he had when “putting his moral weight behind MLK and what he was trying to do.” (“Hesburgh” by Jerry Barca and Christine O’Malley- Moreau FYE Week Two) I didn’t include myself doing that in the eulogy because it’s impossible to predict what injustices I’ll witness, but I want to remind myself to always fight for the justice for all. In the QQC centered around career development, it said that “the only way to know more about yourself is to test the waters - just get out and experience life” (“Navigating Your Career Journey” - Moreau FYE Week Four). I really believe in the power of testing the waters to figure out what’s right, and whether or not it’s experiences like working in a farm or burning out in New York, I hope that my life is full of experiences that guide me to where I belong. In the conversation I had with my best friend for the week 5 QQC, she told me that I tend to overthink for no reason. For the eulogy, I tried to describe a life where I didn’t overthink and just followed my heart. I believe that everything works out, and I never want to let myself overthink my life if I am just on my journey of finding myself. Initially, I viewed writing this eulogy as a rather grim activity. But, in retrospect, I believe it was more motivating/inspiring than depressing because mortality gives life meaning. As Sister Aletheia said, “we try to suppress the thought of death, or escape it, or run away from it because we think that’s where we’ll find happiness, but it’s actually in facing the darkest realities of life that we find light in them.” (“Meet the nun who wants you to remember that you will die” by Ruth Graham - Moreau FYE Week Three) The process of imagining what I want my life to look like and what values I want to carry with me has been extremely helpful. Thank you so much!