davintosh

I’ve been working on tracking down some of my ancestors lately, and there’s one thing that really, really sticks out to me — for most people the sense of who we are and what we’ve accomplished doesn’t stick around very long after we’re gone.

I look at the names of my grandparents, great-grandparents, and so on, and I have no idea who some of these people are nor what they did in life nor what was important to them. My Mom’s mother lived across the street for us until she died in the late ’60’s, but I can’t say I knew her well. Grandma Thornton lived close by too, and I remember spending a lot of time with her, but my recollection of her is pretty fuzzy. She died when I was 12, and knowing how my own boys were able to understand things around them at my age helps me to understand why I don’t remember her better. Both my grandpas were gone before I was born, so what I knew was told to me by my parents, and that was pretty sparse.

For most people, if you go back three or four generations, even the barest of details is difficult to unearth: Where were they born? Who were their siblings? Who were their friends? Whom did they marry, and why? How many children did they have? What difficulties did they face through life? The record of their life history is reduced little more than a few pertinent dates, if that. And that’s sad.

My own kids didn’t have much opportunity to know my parents; Dad was gone before Emily was born, and the accursed Alzheimer’s had made Mom pretty much unknowable. I’ve tried to help them know Mom & Dad a little through stories I share about them, but there’s a huge gap between what I can tell my kids about Mom & Dad and what was truly important to Mom & Dad. For that matter, I can’t honestly say that I know what was truly important to Mom & Dad, because that was something that was never discussed. They were busy raising nine kids, and did what they could to pass their values & morals on to me and the rest of the family, but all of that is colored and distorted by how I processed all that through the years. I’m left with my impressions of them and a handful of stories and photos.

Very few people are truly good communicators. It’s a difficult thing to articulate one’s thoughts, feelings & desires to someone directly and have them really understand. It’s more difficult still to do that indirectly, to someone one or two generations removed. It’s pretty close to impossible if you don’t set out to do that intentionally, and for most people… Well, life is pretty much all-consuming for us in this day and age, and I’m sure it was even more so in days past. There’s a lot of stuff to fill out in Maslow’s Hierarchy before you are able to make time for leaving a legacy.

I don’t know if I’m just weird, or if I have too much time on my hands to think about things like this or what, but I don’t want my kids and their kids to not know me and Yvonne. So I’m going to set out to leave a history behind. Most of it will be pretty boring — just as my parents’ and grandparents’ stories were likely pretty boring — but what I wouldn’t give to have a better understanding of who they were. I don’t have any specific plans, but I will come up with something by the end of this week, and will report back. I’d encourage anyone reading this to come up with your own plan, and leave a legacy for your kids, and grandkids, and great-grandkids. They’ll love you for it.

After posting that last night, this morning’s devotional focused on Psalm 90; I thought parts were very fitting to the subject at hand;

You return man to dust
and say, “Return, O children of man!”
For a thousand years in your sight
are but as yesterday when it is past,
or as a watch in the night.

You sweep them away as with a flood; they are like a dream,
like grass that is renewed in the morning:
in the morning it flourishes and is renewed;
in the evening it fades and withers.

The years of our life are seventy,
or even by reason of strength eighty;
yet their span is but toil and trouble;
they are soon gone, and we fly away.
Who considers the power of your anger,
and your wrath according to the fear of you?