Yesterday would have been Grandmother’s 100th birthday. I’ve thought about her a lot the past several days. And, along with her, Granny, Papa and Grandma. Those losses are just stacked together for me, coming as they did one right after the other. It’s…overwhelming to have an entire generation of your family wiped away in such a short time. The move from “grandchild” to “child” is a major thing. No longer is there a two generation buffer between me and “next”, but now only one. Each generation takes care of the one before it and after it, and that means I am now the one in the middle. Its on me. That’s a little bit scary, yk? Can I handle that? Do I have what it takes? Can I balance everything I now need to do, or am I going to drop a plate? Especially now that I am trying to balance school along with all my other responsibilities.
(I’m not including Grand-dad here, he died so long ago, and though I still miss him, his death was not part of that overwhelming time.)
But yesterday was also a major day for me. For the first time, I was able to smile at the thought of those Grandparents having gained their reward, knowing joy forevermore. Should I tell you that I cried myself to sleep Sunday night thinking about them, still selfishly grieving? I think so, it’s part of the story.
All of that brings me to the title of this post: Legacies. You know, we each have two of those; the one we receive and the one we leave. I’m not talking about material goods here, because those are unimportant. I’m talking about life perspectives, how we handle bumps in the road, the things that go into the major decisions we make. Do we operate from a position of love and trust? Or from a place of hate and suspicion? We pick up those mindsets from our role models, but they become self-fulfilling prophecies. If we expect that the world is always out to get us, then it surely will. If we expect good things to come, then that’s what we end up with. Our own actions cause that, and what do we base our actions on? Mindset.
It’s a big enough thought that we ought to be mindful of the legacy we are leaving even as we deal with the one we have received.
Thank you for the article. My wife and I have 6 children and until 2008 they had all 4 Great Grandparents and all 4 Grandparents. To make things better, we all lived in the same town living within 1 mile of each other. My grandpa owned a business in our town and when he died in 09 he had left his legacy. I have now started an online business selling Peaches uniforms and not only am I trying to carry on his legacy but make my own. Tomorrow I will turn 40 and we are trying to teach our kids about the importance of YOUR legacy. It is never easy to loose a loved one and I will keep you in my prayers.