Get in touch

Starting Off 2023 on a New Note—Your Top 10

January 1, 2023

Dear friends,

Today is the first day of what could well become one of the best years of your life (so far). There’s nothing but potential awaiting you. There’s no greater feeling that filing away the prior year, peeling off the plastic of the new insert to your day planner and starting fresh.

Do you have a list of things you want to change in the new year? Or, have you come up with a blank sheet of paper because you like things just as they are?

Rather than stare at the computer trying to come up with resolutions just to have some, perhaps it might be helpful to give up on the idea of resolutions to make. Perhaps you might consider making a list of 10 people in your life who mean the most to you.

If you were to win the Texas Lottery, or if you were to win the top prize given to someone who works in your field, or if someone you care about is one you’d miss if they were not here tomorrow…those are the 10 people who you might want to tell first about your happy circumstances and good fortune. They also might be the ones who know the most about you and could answer the question: What was he or she like? What did they like and what made them angry or sad?

People you know and who truly know you well most have seen you in life at good times and at bad ones. They know how you respond to success as well as failures. They know if you are an encourager, or if you prefer to look at things in a less than optimistic, a more realistic way.

In your Top 10, these are people in whom you would confide your greatest sorrows and trust to be happy in your good fortune, should something special come your way out of the blue.

Now, say two people are taken away from your Top 10 due to illness or death. They’re not there anymore. What do you do? How do you fill that gap? How do you meet that need? What is missing in your life now that they are gone?

People cannot actually be replaced by other people who are similar to the ones you lost. You can’t fill out a menu when searching for your closest, most intimate friends. They are people you trust with your children, and you would leave your most precious commodities in their trust without fear or worry. How do you know if you have made the right choice as taking people on as friends? Do your friends always tell the truth? Will they tell you what you need to hear or what they know you want to hear? Your instincts are the best judge of who best interacts with you now and in the future.

One question to ask as we turn the page and enter a new year is: Have we told the people who mean the most to us how much they mean to us? Already? More than one time? Today is the first day of a new year, and it represents the first opportunity for you to call and tell your loved ones how much they mean to you. Better yet, drop by and see them in person and give them a big hug. Take photos with them today, now, and take time to record in some way or other for 5, 10, or more years from now, when you wish you would have done so.

I’m not suggesting that you look at everyone you love and see them in terms of final days. It’s absolutely the opposite. Life passes by so fast when you are having fun. We have cell phones that help us document the sights and sounds of joy and laughter as we spend time and live our lives to the fullest as best we can. Thanks to that, though, life moving so fast, we’ve almost given up writing in daily journals, taking time to get photos printed and pasted into photo albums, writing carefully in great handwriting when it was, who was there, and where you were when life slowed down for 30 seconds, long enough to snap a photo. There’s a lot we miss when we simply transfer photos into folders that sit on computer hard drives. How often do you go back into those folders to look at the pictures from last year, even?

There are at least 9 cell phone pictures taken for every actual professional camera photograph taken these days. Yet, how many photos could you take and store on your iPhone 3 or your Galaxy 4 compared to what you can today? Remember vinyl records moved to reel-to-reel and cassette tapes, then to 8-track tapes, then to compact disc and now we are also including a strong return to vinyl again?

Electronic imaging and media storage is a method that changes daily in one way or another. This is one reason why we are fortunate that we have our grandparents’ photo albums (if we are lucky) to have something to say “There, that person is my loved one!” If you want to stay with the computer storage, then maybe you want to spend a little extra time labeling folders completely and descriptively and tag the people in each one. It may not be identical to the photo album experience, but at least five years from now if you are missing someone special…you’ll be glad you did.

Please know how much we appreciate and regard highly each of you who has been our friend and client. You are family to us. Hoping you’ll stop in to say hello and have a cup of coffee this year when you’re in the neighborhood. That’s what friends do, all year long. Happy 2023!

Cody D. Jones ’02

Owner & Community Member

< Older Post Newer Post >

New Beginnings, Clean Slate Begin This New School Year

August 27, 2024

As longtime Brazos Valley residents know, we’ve been taking the back streets the past two weeks now, and until after the first home game traffic settles back, you can count on our staying there. The annual ritual of Back-to-School brings yet another 1500 Aggies to the community, much to the delight of local business owners, who survive the summer to reach the thriving days of fall and summer.

Olympic Times and Trials —What We Learn and Can Teach From Them

July 29, 2024

It’s an exciting first weekend we just experienced, with the opening of the Summer Olympic Games in Paris, France. The week of the Olympics landed in the midst of a very busy series of news cycles that document world events and daily news. Good and bad news abounds, everywhere you look it seems. You just have to pick and choose what you want to let into your day. Yet, it’s important to be aware of the world around us, because the earliest displays of the lessons we teach our children revolve around how we respond to the ups and downs of life.

Independence, Freedom, and Choices

July 4, 2024

This is the day when we break out the red, white, and blue décor and display our pride in being Americans with the rest of our community, same as we do every year at this time. Across the Brazos Valley some of our neighborhoods are staging their own parades and parents have helped their children decorate their bike handles with streamers. Sound systems are playing “The Stars and Stripes Forever” as a parade route forms. Pedal cars are moving into position behind the four- and five-year-old drivers maneuvering into position. Electric cars driven by Batman or John Deere III slide into view.

Why We Attend — The Value of a Visitation

July 1, 2024

The Love Wrapped Inside My Father’s Arms

June 16, 2024

Just looking at these two photos, separated by three decades, I’m overwhelmed to think of how it still just seems like yesterday that my dad was loading up the station wagon, ready to drive me and our soccer team all across the back roads of Texas as we competed across the state, trying our best to stand out.

Mother’s Day — A Promise of Remembrance

May 12, 2024

Of all the women in our lives, mothers certainly hold a position of supreme love and regard that often are set far above others we hold dear in life. Mothers are, frankly, our first very best friends and throughout life, others may come close but there’s a place that only they can hold dear in our hearts.

Who Will Be Your Informant (When the time comes)?

April 29, 2024

In the past few weeks, I’ve heard from high school friends that two of our classmates had died. This is not uncommon by itself, but the surprise came as I learned that one of our classmates had died two years ago, and another some three months ago. Yet, not one person we knew in common had known of their passing before now, so none of us who grew up together had any idea that we’d lost two “of our own.” That meant sorrow upon sorrow at the delay in learning of their passing.

Joy in the Morning: Easter Blessings for All

March 31, 2024

Just as excitedly as children rush from their beds on Easter morning to see what might be awaiting them in their Easter baskets from the Easter bunny, adults have reason to approach this blessed Sunday with similar enthusiasm. The promise of the memory of the stone that was rolled back, revealing an empty tomb brings to all of us the reminder that Christ rose from the dead and God took him back home to be with him. The victory of the resurrection is our guarantee as adults that we can celebrate each year.

Teaching Our Children About Holy Week — Introduction to Palm Sunday

March 24, 2024

Now that our son Rowen is two years old, Chelsea and I are beginning to introduce him to the elements of a regular church worship service that occur with regularity each year. True, one can only make a preliminary impression on a youngster with respect to helping him or her understand the rituals we as adults have grown up with, all of our lives. The occasion of Palm Sunday gives us a chance to help Rowen know that on Palm Sunday, we are going to be seeing everyone we know waving a large palm frond as we come into the church.

Social Media Footprints — Have You Planned for What Happens When You’re Not Here?

March 19, 2024

Over the years we’ve all become more friendly with social media, whether we’re texting our family and friends or whether or not we are adding a smiley face to the post of our latest grandchild playing a sport, and we share it on all our outlets too, because you know, we are proud!

Starting Off 2023 on a New Note—Your Top 10

Callaway-Jones Funeral Home and Crematory