Meaning and Legacy Revisited

Someone in my Grief Support Group on Thursday mentioned how much he values the knowledge of his ... and his dead wife's ... legacy. Legacy in their children, and their grandchildren.

I felt that pang: I have no such legacy. Everyone in that group seems to have family and friends ... both not exactly my strong points. Nor ... honestly ... my Mom's. Not when she died.

Legacy could I guess mean either Family or Friends or both. On either score, let's face it. From the point of view of Legacy, Mom's "project" was, on her departure, in shambles. Although to be sure her shambles were far superior to my own.

But then I remember Ozymandias. And the professional mourners that the bereaved hired in bygone years. Clearly the Legacy for many in the Here and Now is a major challenge. And in the long run ... there is no Legacy in this world for anyone, is there.

Maybe that's one reason I feel such a hunger for celebrating Mom now ... for taking pictures, and looking at her photo album, and going to where she's been before ... I know that when I am gone there will be no one ... *no* one ... who will be treasuring these mementos, etc, as does her son. I am the last; when I am gone, all is gone in our line; and frankly the photos I take will be of zero interest to anyone else. That hurts, it hurts so much.

I guess in a way that's what a big, big part of me sees as my Vocation: to appreciate her. In the Here and Now.

Because that's that ... and after that, it's all over.

That's how I feel. Even knowing that God will be her greatest, and most infinite, appreciator ... as for all of us. No one knows me and you and each person nearly as well as God. No one can love her like God does. Ever. These things I know. Yet ... yet ... how I feel is very, very overwhelmed with a sense of finality, of "this is the End."

Oh my God please have mercy on her ... and on me. And on all of us ...

Love in Christ,

Charles Delacroix
Eve of the Feast of St Bruno