> “If you had the tool to do ‘25 reasons why I love you, mom,’” she added, “wouldn’t it still mean something, even if it was written by a machine?”

It would, but it would mean a whole lot less than if it were written by the surviving child.

I'm certainly not going to advise or judge anyone who is in the midst of grief about what tradeoffs are right for them to make during that time. Tradeoffs have to be made in order to juggle everything, including emotions, and what are the right or wrong ones are intensely personal. But when my mother died, any eulogy that I didn't write by my own hand would have felt like I was cheating her.