What is YOUR Legacy?

Did you ever have someone close to you die? When I say, close to you, I mean someone you knew really well and who knew you too. I mean someone, maybe not a mate, but maybe a parent or close friend whose death hit you really hard and made you ask yourself what the hell life is all about anyway?

I did.

Oddly enough it was not a parent, although that was bad enough when my own father died. He was a constant smoker and I always expected to get the call that he had dropped dead from a heart attack, or got lung cancer and was given six months to live. No, it was not my father. It was the mother of my girl friend at the time. Her name was Alice, and she died unexpectedly of an asthma attack at the age of 59. I had known her for about 15 years and we were friends enough that we would argue with each other all the time about all kinds of things.

I guess one of the reasons it hit me so hard was that her death was unexpected. I don't really know why the unexpected part should matter so much, or at all. But I guess an unexpected death is a terrible surprise, something like a terrible tragedy....because it is something that could hit any one of us at any time. That's the unexpected part.

We don't plan to have accidents. We don't plan to have illness. We can't control the economy or whether or not our country goes to war or that we might be nuked when we go to bed at night. So there it is. Death can just happen... to you, to me, to anybody young or old.

So you have to ask yourself. What are you doing with your life, while you are here to live it? What is it that matters so much that you would spend your last day on earth doing it, if you knew for fact that you would be dead tomorrow, or next week, or next year.

And what does anyone else's opinion of you matter? You have to live your life, your way. Because none of us knows when our lives might end.  What is the legacy you want to leave?


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R. Allan Worrell