As I get older mortality starts to set in.
Not in the Gospel sense of "Where did I come from? Why am I here? Where do I go after this life?", but what have we left behind?
I have a box of pictures left to me by my Grandmother Iva. I don't know who most of the people in the pictures are. And if I do I barely remember them. So why do I keep them? Why don't I throw them out? After all, they were just people that I never really knew.
I cant, because they are my blood. They weren't perfect people, some weren't even good people, but they are my people.
When we die what do we leave behind? Some pictures, some nick knacks, a few friends that will soon follow us? Not much really. Some people are lucky enough to have a statue, street, park, or school named after them. But a generation later no one knows or cares who they were.
Isn't it funny how we leave a different legacy with different people. I have a friend who was telling me about his family. First he told me that his Grandfather was the mayor of a city for many years and that he was appointed to some very important government positions. In the next breath he told he he was not a good man according to his Mother. Obviously, many people liked and trusted him or he wouldn't have been re-elected many times. Why did his daughter dislike him? Because of this, my friend had always assumed his Grandfather was not a good man.
Knowing his family well, I asked him a question. What are your recollections of your Father. He said he loved and respected him. Then I asked him what his siblings thought of their Father. They saw him as an overbearing tyrant. Wow, pretty different answers. His children will be told about the Father he had. Their cousins will be told about the Father their parents had.
My point being, history and family relationships are subjective. The winners of wars write the history. Everybody has a story about a family member.
As I look back on my life I see things I can be proud of and things I am not. I did not have a storybook childhood. But a lot of people had it worse than me. My Dad's four marriages were tough on me. Going to 7 different elementary schools gave me the ability to make friends fast (even if was only for a few months), to size people up and to adapt. It also meant I didn't have real friends until Jr. high and High school. A handful I still keep in contact with. I'm not complaining, I had a lot of advantages very few kids have. However, those advantages did not make up for the family turmoil. I am thankful for my Grandmother Iva and my aunt Bobby. They were the stability in my childhood. They were my real "Mothers" and I miss them dearly.
As with most people, I wish I could turn back the clock and do some things differently. I often wish that I could go back, change a decision and watch my life in a movie and see how it turns out. But we can't, we make decisions and we have to live with them.
This week we have 2 family events. First, my grandson Tate is getting Baptised. The next day our newest grand daughter Ella is being blessed. Being a parent was hard. Being "Pa Pa" is easy! While your kids may remember you as a less than perfect parent, none of them ended up in jail or on drugs so I wasn't a total failure! Hopefully my Grand kids will remember me as their Pa Pa who loves them more than anything in the world. Who drives thousands of miles to be part of their life events, who cherishes their scrawling pictures and cards that cover the refrigerator. Why is this? Because they are what I leave behind in this life. And I want them to know who is in the picture.
