One Small Voice: Legacies written on the heart, in the mind

In recent days I’ve been giving an unusual amount of thought to the idea of legacy.

Twelve years ago, when my Ma died, and my sisters and I were distributing and dispensing with her worldly goods, I was suddenly struck by to how little one human life could be reduced once she was gone.

In life she was the sharer of knowledge, the sieve-head who couldn’t keep some things straight while at other times speaking the words of a sage, the gifted seamstress and artist, and collector of scant, but marvelous, trinkets from her life, the comforter, the giver of self.  But in death, she was a box of old wind-up toys, a box of jigsaw puzzles, a box of playbills from theater shows she had seen, countless photo albums, and a collection of wise monkeys. Materially, not much to show for 82 years of living.

But in recent years, writing for Townbroadcast, I have discovered the intangible legacies she left me in her teachings, her ethics and morals, her stories of family in times of want and plenty.  And I find that those legacies are more numerous and more valuable than the set of her wedding silver (with a great story of its own) I inherited.

In light of the death too soon of Jeff Salisbury – a friend and mentor to many of you who read Townbroadcast – I have been revisiting the idea of legacy.

If you followed Facebook posts from family and friends of Jeff, you are well aware of the multitudes of people he touched in life.  Jeff didn’t leave a physical legacy, like Dale Carnegie with his libraries across the United States.  Jeff’s was as intangible as my Ma’s.

It was in his contagious joy of life, in his willingness to share that joy and his time, skills, initiative, and effort that constituted his gift to his community and beyond.  He touched innumerable students.  He touched local government, the school district, and the library as participant in the governing processes of all three.  He believed in building people up, never tearing them down.  He embraced kindness, critical thinking, celebration of life, and, above all, the treasure that was, and remains, his family.

It strikes me that most of us will never leave much of a physical reminder to mark our time here on earth.  We’ll not have statues, or boulevards bearing our names.  There won’t be academic buildings on university campuses named for us, or sports stadiums or memorial parks.  There won’t be landmark legislation or a Nobel Prize.  What most of us will leave is that which remains in the minds and hearts of our friends and our families, our children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews, neighbors and co-workers.  We will leave an idea that lives on because it is really just a universal truth passed on to us for safe keeping for the next generation, and so on.

It might be the love of a particular type of music or literature, love of a game or hobby, the love of good works, and the celebration of normal, ordinary, everyday things like a good report card, or a first paycheck, a new baby, a glorious sunrise, the first dandelion of spring or the first snowfall of winter.

It might be a philosophy of life, a religious tenet.  It might be a profound view on life gleaned from a favorite author.

Ordinary legacies cannot be held in the hand or pressed between pages of a book or framed and hung on a wall.

Ordinary legacies are written on the heart and in the mind.  They survive as part of the quantum entanglements of the universe that move through, around and among us infinitely in the energy of time and space.

I doubt that many of us direct our lives with the intention of leaving specific, named legacies, other than some heirloom jewelry, or a military medal, by which others can remember us.

It is in the tone of daily living that we create a positive or negative legacy for others to remember and, perhaps, emulate.

“And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.”  (Song The End by the Beatles)