Discovering Love: That'll leave a mark--we hope

Whoa, horsey!

Artist A.B. Frost, "Whoa, there!" 1904

I've apparently reached the age where my friends' parents are passing away, my late parents' friends are passing away, and people in my age range are passing from illnesses. Maybe this has happened all along, for years or forever, or maybe I just notice it because I see the posts in Facebook, where the spouse or adult child of a friend writes to say that their loved one passed a few days ago and there will be a memorial service in the near future.

I played the keyboard for a small family memorial service this evening. Usually at memorials, there are people who will stand up and give a short testimony of what the deceased person meant to them, or share a sweet or funny story. This time, I learned from the widow that the deceased man had several copies of his tools because his garage work area was cluttered and he couldn't find them when he needed them; and his grandson remembered the time when he intentionally hit a succession of traffic hazard cones on the freeway just to hear the thud. A friend said that the man had a good sense of humor (but gave no examples). And that was about it. I'm not sure if the man was unremarkable or that his family were unskilled in services of this nature. Did no one know him well?

In the 1980s and 1990s, my dad's elderly cousin, Goldie, corresponded with my parents several times a year in addition to the annual Christmas card. She always filled the envelope with obituary clippings for people she knew in her county in Iowa, and maybe folks she thought were related, but who we didn't know. She was fascinated with the cause of death of these people: crash on icy roads, cancer, stroke, murder, falling off a ladder, Alzheimer's, overdose, or any number of fatal incidents.

In some years, the twice-widowed Goldie would fly from Iowa to Phoenix, where my parents lived, and live the snowbird life during the warm winters. My dad would pick her up at her rental house and take her to church, or bring her back to his home for Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner. She had rather severe asthma, and she took taxis to doctors, but my dad would take her to the pharmacy after work. While I lived in California, she asked for my address and started mailing her weird obituaries to me.

Goldie died at age 87 in 2005, having outlived two husbands and a daughter and son-in-law. She had no grandchildren.

Thanks to Ancestry and 23andMe DNA tests, I've connected with second and third cousins I never knew I had. One of them said that she remembered Goldie in a negative light, at the passing of a mutual relative.

But the strangest thing we discovered in our research is that after decades of scouring the county obituary notices and passing them along to relatives and strangers, Goldie herself had no obituary, at least none that we can find in several sources online. There's only the tombstone to give a name and dates, but no fine details about who the deceased was in the lives of loved ones, or that they volunteered for a cause, or was a member of a church, or that they belonged to a union or civic organization, or served their country. Those are the things that personalize the dead, and leave an imprint on our memories.

Have you thought about what you'd like to be remembered for? An encouraging manner, that you were an excellent teacher or loyal friend, that you influenced young people to be givers or to be moral adults, that you were a mentor to someone who admired you, that your handiwork or art will remain after you're gone, that you were a blessing to people or animals, that you gave [time, money, gifts, blood, talents] to friends or strangers from your heart? Have you thought about the legacy you're leaving in the world? Can anyone say that you mattered, that you tossed "nice-bombs" of words or actions at them, or that you taught them something they'll never forget? Can they remember a time when you fell down but came back stronger, or that you sacrificed something to bless another person? What sort of stories would people tell at your "celebration of life?"

A good person leaves an inheritance for their children’s children. Proverbs 13:22 NIV

And if you don't have children of your body, don't think you're off the hook! You should leave a legacy for the children of your relatives, your church, your community, your country, your world. Leave a mark, and let it be a good one!

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