Is Legacy Following You, Too?

Legacy made obvious!

“Legacy” is following me. I see it everywhere – in emails, conversations, podcasts, articles. And legacy is not being at all sneaky, but making itself known at every turn.

Part of it, I realize, is the work I do. The desire to leave a legacy is key to prioritizing the effort of saving and sharing family photos and stories. My clients are actively concerned with legacy.

Part of it is my age. I’m at the age when parents of friends, and one of my own, die. Their fresh absence leaves us, their children, knowing so clearly what is lost when a dear one dies, keenly aware of their legacy with us. And, I’m wondering, for the first time, “What will be my legacy?”

What is legacy, really?

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, legacy’s first definition is “something (such as property or money) that is received from someone who has died.” Not usually applied to small bequests, legacy is significant. Like a capital L Legacy.

But legacy isn’t just about money or property. Legacy’s second definition (again, according to Merriam-Webster) is “something that happened in the past or that comes from someone in the past.”

And that’s where most of us find legacy – it’s in the recipes we share, in the traditions we uphold, in the wise words we hear in our heads. This one feels more like a lower case l legacy.

“What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.”  – Pericles, Philosopher

Earlier this year, I was the second of three speakers discussing the importance of telling stories. The first speaker, Carolyn Curry, is the author of the biography of Ella Gertrude Clanton Thomas, a Georgia woman who, for 41 years, kept a journal of her life as a Southern white woman at the end of the 19th century. Gertrude became an unlikely feminist and leader in the Southern suffrage movement. Carolyn’s biography cemented Gertrude’s legacy – a life reflecting and impacting significant times in our state and country.

Next to speak, I told the story of Phoebe Nation Edwards Dunn, born July 31, 1904 in Jersey City, New Jersey. Phoebe was known for being strong-willed, boisterous, fun and fiercely devoted to her family and friends. A dedicated card player (bridge was her game and she kept a separate “gambling” purse in her ever-present pocketbook), she was always up for adventure or a party.

You can’t read a biography about Phoebe. But I can tell you stories and show you pictures. I knew Phoebe as Bumbum…my grandmother.

She hugged me hard when I arrived to visit. She listened closely to me and believed I could do anything. And, she let me know if I’d gone too far, saying, “Jiffy, you are a Dunn. You don’t do that.”

She taught me card games, how to win and, more importantly, how to lose. She drank tea (always from a china teacup and saucer) while everyone else I knew drank coffee from a mug. Cocktail hour was sacrosanct, when family gathered and told stories while I sat on the floor and looked through old photo albums. She got teary when she hugged me goodbye.

Bumbum’s legacy is, as Pericles describes, woven into who I am and what I value – honesty, responsibility, nurture, fun, and belonging to a family. So are holiday traditions (like the annual New Year’s Eve quiz – ongoing in the family since the 1940s), tea drinking and labrador retrievers.

And I can’t ignore her legacy in her traits I see in me, her granddaughter, and in my granddaughter – strong-willed, boisterous, fun.

Is legacy – big L or little l – following you, too? Tapping you on the shoulder, asking you to recognize and honor the legacies you’ve received and to consider your own?

I’m glad. Let’s talk.