Legacies

How much time do we have left?
To the next tsunami?
To our next vacation?
To the visit from our grandchild?
To the next medical emergency?

All of the above! How much longer before we die? Yes. After sixty, more than at any other time we calculate our life expectancy and the resources we need to make it there.  Yes, the thoughts creep in during a perfectly beautiful day with no pains and no worries. 

Creeping you out yet?

What if today was your last day?
What would you do?
How would you prioritize your day?

My husband would drive to a great restaurant in Napa Valley, California, six hours from where we are, to enjoy his last meal. He'd forgo his diet and even order off the menu . He'll have the best wine and the richest dessert.  He'll continue eating until his last hour.

Me?

I'd fret. I'd want to call my kids, tell them how much I've enjoyed having them, raising them, seeing them all grown and settled. I'll tell them to live their lives fully, to look forward to new adventures wherever and whenever these arrive, to love fully, to worry less. I would write down these last thoughts so they and their future children could retrace these days and find me here on these pages.

I have very few mementos from my parents. I have none of their  letters, and cannot account how they got lost or got misplaced.  We moved so much that many things got displaced.  I miss those words more than anything.

We have these marvelous tools at our disposal: cameras, paper and pens, recording devices for our voices, our faces. These things will become our legacy. Our words will capture  the things we talk about, the issues that kept us up at night. 

Yes, I would write on my last day.

The legacy we leave behind is not our wealth, our possessions.
It is the memories we have of each other; the words and the gestures that molded our lives together.
 

Tell your story.

As we age, we look back at  places, people, skills and accomplishments that belonged to us and gave us identity and purpose.

We miss people.
We miss work.
More than we know.

We remember longingly our childhood days,  family members, celebrations, trips to the beach, the mountains, the city.
Many things have changed.
Our lives are finite.
We are coming to the end of this journey. Everything we do and we think about, may be for the last time.

I get these feelings quite often.
I'm constantly reminded that what's ahead is the end.


We can preserve these memories by writing them down, cherishing them properly, putting a ribbon around them and presenting them to our children and grandchildren, and generations still to come. Our humanity will be reflected in our stories and our words.

I teach a college class in Memoir Writing every winter or so.  (It all depends on funding!) I too reminisce and share my written pieces with the class, and so, lovingly and deliberately, I'm preserving  my gold pieces. 

Have you thought about writing your memoir?

Who will tell your story?


p.s. if you have not discovered my other blog, stop by, learn something new:

http://lakeviewer-italianforbeginners.blogspot.com/

Words, words and more...

What do we sound like if not the sum of all the words we have encountered, the books we have read, the songs we have sung? Like air for lungs, words have been the oxigen to our thoughts. They're inhaled and exhaled, changed and exchanged, refined and recombined.

They are the currency of discourse,flowing easily like a river or crushing down like a waterfall.

And words can be the legacy we leave behind. Unlike gold, or silver, words are abundant and easily available. And like gold and other precious commodities, our words will leave a concrete and substantial heritage to our family for generations to come.

Have you written down the stories and the thoughts that are the sum of your being?