The Legacy That We Leave Behind

Today, I sat and listened to some Counting Crows songs on You Tube.  One of my favourites has always been Have You Seen Me Lately? particularly the acoustic version.  Listening to this song set me to thinking about what would happen if I were no longer around, if I were to disappear, what would be the legacy that I would leave behind?

Please don't get me wrong, I am not planning on disappearing any time soon.  Sorry folks, I hope to be around for a long time yet.  My melancholy thoughts today are surely driven by it being the birthday of a dear friend of mine, who was unfortunately taken from us.  I remember him clearly, I can still hear his laugh, I can still visualise his antics.  I know that his spirit lives on, all the time that I hold on to those memories.  So, as I sat listening to this song, I began to wonder what is it that I will leave behind.

For many people, that legacy is their family.  The sons and daughters that carry the blood of the parents, that continue the family line.  In the Old Testament, it was the children of Jacob that continued the line of Israel, and for generations since, that blood line has continued.  I am the son of my father, who is the son of his father before him, and so on.  The male line of my fathers will end with me, since I have no family of my own, as least not yet.  It is therefore not possible for me to leave behind any blood to continue my line. 

My writing then, could that be my legacy?  I wonder if there will be anyone, in years to come, who chances upon something that I have written, all of these words that I have formed into a sentence or phrase, and I wonder if they will be affected by those words?  I do know from some feedback I have received, that my words do have some affect on peoples lives.  What I write makes people think, it inspires, it raises questions, it causes people to smile, it makes them sad, it provokes an emotional response, and it has the power to help.  The words I write here in this blog, as well as the books of poems and inspirational writing that I have written, exist in the vastness of the internet, stored on a computer some where in the world, in the form of 1s and 0s.  If those servers were to crash, if Google were to seize to exist, if Amazon went out of business, if I am no longer here to update those books into changing data standards and maintain my blog account, then those books and my blog will seize to exist.

I have written travel journals of my times in Asia, South Africa, of trips to USA, Fiji, Australia.  I have a number of dive log books, that detail the first 500 dives that I made.  These will also live on after I am gone.  But where?  With no children to care for them, surely they will be discarded as having no value other than sentimental value?   Who would wish to keep them, as they are personal and would be irrelevant for any one outside of my family.

The friends I have, I would last in the memories of my friends.  I have few true friends if truth be told.  Yes, my memory would burn within them for a time, but gradually, those memories would fade away and be gone.  When those friends passed, then so too would my legacy, with no one to recall the memories of me and the times that we shared together.

My parents, my brother and my sister, they would surely remember me?  I've lived overseas for 11 years, and in that time, I have not spent a great deal of time with them. I speak to my parents fairly regularly, as time differences and the internet availability allows, but it is not easy.  As much as I wish it were different, I rarely speak to my brother and sister at all these days.  I hear from them only if I contact them, or if they need something from me.  Their lives are too busy, too full for a brother that has been away as much as I.  I no longer figure in their lives.  I am not present.  I am already the shadow of a person that they once knew.

It seems to me that I could quietly go away and perhaps no one would notice that I was gone.  I could creep out and quietly close the door behind me.  Just like Christopher McCandless in the book and movie, Into The Wild, I could disappear from my life and leave it all behind.  In a very short while, no one would know that I had ever been there.  Perhaps I have been fading out for all of these years.  Maybe that is what I have been subconsciously doing?  Bringing my life to such a point where, if I were to depart, no one would notice my absence.  Perhaps I have done this so that I did not disturb any one on the way out.  That would be very much like me.

As I wrote above, I am not going anywhere just yet.  I have no intentions of leaving, since my work here is still not done, not until I have my own family, not until I see the laughter and joy in the faces of my children.  That is my purpose here and I will see it done.  I'll end this post with the poem that I was inspired to write, entitled, Would You Remember Me?


Would You Remember Me?

Sometimes I wonder,

Whether I am in danger of disappearing,
Like the last leaf of a summer gone by,
Torn from the bough,
Falling to the ground in the chill wind of autumn,
Would anyone miss me?
Would anyone care?
If I was nothing more than words,
Once written by a heart,
If I was nothing other than a memory,
A figure who once walked his path,
Who spoke of love and light,
And now, alas, just a shadow,
A glimpse, a fleeting thought,
Would you remember me?

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