The Truth Of A Legacy
Norma Lhee Hooper
Having recently faced the wrenching process of saying goodbye to my 102-year old grandmother, I found myself shuttered away in my house this past week—away from the bitter cold, away from the ever charging forward world—brooding. Some might call it grieving, and that probably factored in, to be sure. But we writers are a brooding lot; my grandmother, a writer, herself, I know would concur. We agreed on many things.
I pulled out old photographs—her 15-year old self smiling shyly into the camera, her wedding picture taken only three short years later. A candid shot during a happy moment; she looks to be in her early forties. I can only marvel at how much has changed in the world over the course of her life, and yet, even 102 years seems such a brief blip in time, really.
As I think of my relationship with her, knowing I was just one of so many lives she touched in a deep and profound way, it strikes me humble—ashamed, really—to consider the worldly things keeping so many of us so preoccupied these days. Materialism, consumerism, our jockeying for this position or that promotion, another rung on the ladder of self-importance. Things that won’t matter a whit when we’re looking back on it all in the end.
I have been very fortunate to have been raised by several people to whom it was extremely difficult to say goodbye. And the lesson I’ve been so slow to learn, that has only become clear to me through the process of losing them, is how unimportant every thing is. The jobs, the titles, the credentials, the bank balance. We strive for so much, and hope we’ll be remembered for something great, something big, something important we’ve done, when it’s the other lives we touch, even in the smallest, simplest of ways, that determines our true legacy. We live on in the memories of the people who knew us best, and loved us well. So seldom does leaving an imprint on another person’s heart have anything to do with our job title or status.
My grandmother, like so many women of her time, never did anything great by the modern world’s standard of achievement. She raised a family, held a few menial jobs and wrote a book. Nothing spectacular by worldly measure, and yet…
Beneath those surface appearances is where the real richness of her life bubbled and brewed and spilled over, seeping quietly into others’ lives in the ways that matter most. She loved those around her with a fierce brilliance for which there exists no Nobel or Purple Heart, though it be the very mettle that makes this world livable at all.
After more than a century of living—and it wasn’t all rainbows and butterflies, you can bet—my grandmother still found kindness an entirely practical response to life. Even when her final years required her to be in a nursing home, she continued to affect others with a wit, and a sass, and a sense of humor that was all her own.
If we do it right, our contribution to this world won’t expire when we do. And it has very little to do with things we’ve done, but who we were to the ones we leave behind. That’s the real legacy, right there. That’s all it’s ever been about, all along.
It’s taken me a while, but I finally figured that out. You see, I’m still learning from her, even after she’s gone…
