Notes on Death & Legacy

August 30th, 2009

Being a child who is estranged from her father and whose mother died early on in life, I often look upon other people to be my role models. One might expect that I would seek guidance from my older brother and sister, but regrettably I do not. Unlike other families, our shared childhood did not mold us in similar ways. We did not land in the same place as adults and as such, our differences distanced us. It was not intentional. But it is how, with the passing of time, things have panned out thus far.

So here I am. An orphan by tragedy and by choice. I would be lying if I said that this has not been a primary catalyst for my depressive episodes over the first three and a half decades of my life. It still is, even today, a source of great sadness for me. But I manage.

In order to compensate for my lack of familial relationships, I have surrounded myself with literal and figurative surrogates. They are sometimes people that I know in real life – my friends Chuck and Teresa are a couple people that come to mind right off the bat. Other surrogates however, materializes out of someone that I do not know at all – if you know me, you probably know my fondness for a handful of political figures and the Dalai Lama. I completely look up to them as well.

This Saturday with tissue in hand and tears streaming down my face, I watched the funeral mass for Senator Edward Kennedy. It was emotional on many levels – much of which I will save for the therapy chair later in life. His death (or really anyone’s death) rekindled my feelings regarding the passing of my Aunt and Uncle last spring.

What it comes down to is that I feel shameful about letting so much time past without visiting them. I know that it’s natural that after the death of a loved one you work through all of the “I should haves” and then let them settle in. I know this. But it always begs the questions: “Is this the type of person that I want to be? The one that can’t find the time? The one that focused their efforts on all of the wrong things? The one that did things that didn’t matter?”

No. That is not who I want to be. I don’t think any of us want to be that person. Yet so many of us find ourselves in that very situation.

A word that has been creeping up in my consciousness lately is: LEGACY. Over the past couple of days, much has been made of Senator Kennedy’s legacy as a statesman. He was, they say, “the greatest legislator of our time.” Looking at all of his accomplishments is overwhelming and inspiring.

However, for me the most compelling thing about Kennedy was that despite living through personal failings in the most public way possible and through the enormous burden of the Kennedy legacy, he persevered when many would have retreated. As he once said, “…[I]ndividual faults and frailties are no excuse to give in — and no exemption from the common obligation to give of ourselves.” I find this characteristic about him particularly inspiring. There are times that I feel my faults in life are tragically “epic” and it is nice to be reminded that we can all move on.

We must move on.

President Obama was particularly eloquent in his eulogy of the Senator, my favorite quote being:

“What we can do is to live out our lives as best we can with purpose, and with love, and with joy.  We can use each day to show those who are closest to us how much we care about them, and treat others with the kindness and respect that we wish for ourselves.  We can learn from our mistakes and grow from our failures.  And we can strive at all costs to make a better world, so that someday, if we are blessed with the chance to look back on our time here, we know that we spent it well; that we made a difference; that our fleeting presence had a lasting impact on the lives of others.”

Tags: edward kennedy, legacy, ted kennedy

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 30th, 2009 at 7:21 pm and is filed under Daily. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.