Legacy — A Word of the Week
Legacy:
(Noun) Something transmitted by or received from an ancestor or predecessor or from the past.
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John was a man I called my father, and he passed away recently.
Some days, I think of death as a simple, natural end, and I welcome the concept of the Big Sleep. Some days, I fear it. I have so much I want to do, experience, and put to paper. And I dread the end of my limited time. Other days, I see it a mercy. Putting a four-legged friend down to ease their suffering, or otherwise knowing that someone in pain won’t endure it for much longer.
But other times, like this, it feels hollowing. It feels unfair, and cheap, and too quick, and we all had so much more to say. To talk about. To learn. To laugh about. Even if I’ve tried to make peace with having said what I needed to say he left, it is rending to know that time is up. That the last time I saw John as I knew him, I didn’t know what was about the change. That the last time I saw him in his chair would be the last time I’d see him in his chair. I didn’t realize the last time I saw him would be the last time I would ever see him, even if he couldn’t see me. And what could have been, even just a wish for one more talk, one more laugh, one more honest piece of advice or knowledge, has bore a hole in me.
I think back often to the first to first time I met this man. High school. Sophomore year. I was going to a friend’s house for the first time, now officially a part of their friend group. Like a rite of passage. Her mom came home from work at the hospital, and her dad came home soon after from the county clerk’s office. Back then, I was loud, obnoxious, and had a lot of hair that got everywhere. Now, I’m largely the same, but with less hair…and maybe a little bit more “refined,” in no small part thanks to those parents, and the man I’ve lost.
Looking back, it was never a singular moment, or a time when our bond just clicked. Ours was a slow process, as though I were rolling a boulder uphill. But over time, he would help me push it up in his own way. Bits of advice, or random knowledge I could apply, or showing a comfort in one’s own skin. Chastising me when I fell short of something like human decency. Trusting me to drive the van, for any distance, on a Michigan vacation. Taking professional-level pictures for something as silly as high school dances. Sitting as a “family” and watching everything from documentaries to stand-up comedy to crime serials I would never watch otherwise. Showing me how he did something, how it worked best for him, and maybe it would work for me, too.
It was never one standout moment. It was years and years of little flashes together, often as part of a group, very occasionally just the two of us. But I reached the top of the hill, and I pushed the boulder down the other end. Even as I drifted away for a time, I used the lessons he gave me, both directly and passively, in so much of what I did. I molded them around to fit me, to fit my approach, to fit my life. And when I came back, it was as though no time had passed. I was my own person, shaped in some part by him.
Even as I grieve what I can no longer have, I’m forced to look back at what we already had. There’s nothing like the sudden dim of a light to help you appreciate its glow that much more. But I see so much of him everywhere: in the biological family I’m so tied to; in the found-family that we made throughout our time in high school; in the new “adoptees” he took in when I was gone, and held onto long after I returned. In the ways we were changed from our time at that house, in the ways we took on the roles he did (though rarely as well), in the ways we come together, the things we laugh at, the passions we pursue, and in the love we share.
John was an asshole, and rightly so: the world is full of reasons to be callous. But he was also one of the most loving people I’ve ever known, not only for opening his home to the likes of me for as long as I knew him, but for treating me and my friends as people with potential. People capable of learning, of growing. And now I realize it was never limited to us.
That’s what legacy means to me. That we are all, in our own way, hollowed by this loss…but even though John’s light, bright as it was, is gone from this place, it shines from all of us, in our own way, in what he left us. He is gone, and still he is here. That is his legacy. That is all any of us can hope for in our legacy.
If there is a heaven, I can’t wait it to flip it the bird and backflip into Hell where I know he’s waiting, godless heathen that he is. And if there isn’t, I am glad for what he gave to me and what he left me. I can only hope that I honor him by passing on who he was to whoever’s next, just like a legacy should be.
