This is an I-Heart podcast.

Guaranteed Human. This is Lee Habib, and this is our American stories.

And it's time for our final thought series, where we bring you the final

thoughts of folks who are dying and tributes to loved ones who've passed. A eulogy, a poem,

anything and everything that stirs the soul. This week's final thoughts feature came to us

from the terrific website, thefederalist.com,

where a father named Jeremy Lott shared his eulogy to his daughter, Cecilia,

who passed away in a stillborn birth.

Jeremy recorded his eulogy as he delivered it at the funeral, and he graciously shared it with us all.

Here's Jeremy.

I was going to say that the text of this eulogy is included in your booklets, because

delivery is probably going to be as much of a struggle as the writing was. And I was going to tell

you to feel free to read along or just tune me out and read it later. But it ends with a bit of a

cliffhanger, so you might want to listen. How do you eulogize a girl who never lived? She never

crawled, walked, spoke, cried.

We don't even have honest dates for the tombstone since that clock starts at birth.

By the time of her delivery, my daughter had left the building.

Start with her full name, which she would have hated at times, because children tease.

Cecilia, Little Lot.

Cecilia is perfectly lovely, so of course my wife, Ange came up with it.

But that middle name would have dogged her.

Have a look at her parents with their wide frames in my truly enormous head.

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