A Legacy

To put one’s thoughts on paper in a coherent fashion is no easy task. For some it comes easy, as it used to be for me. Since my stroke last April, I have had some difficulty concentrating and following my own train of thought. It’s like I am the caboose of my own “thought train” and it frequently becomes unhitched and gets left behind. This happens not only when I am writing, but in the course of a normal day as well. I will suddenly draw a blank while conversing with my customers, or use words out of context (which really makes me feel foolish). I walk into my boss’s office with something on my mind, only to sit down and not have a clue what I was there for. Luckily he understands, he was there the night I stroked out.

I have resigned myself to carrying index cards with me to jot down thoughts as they happen because I will not remember even having a thought two minutes later. When I sit down in the evening and read over my cards, I can remember each note as I read it, but without this “memory-flogging” technique, my thoughts are lost forever. I used to be able to remember everything, especially numbers.

I have looked at other Hubs and have noticed that some of the more talented and gifted writers have received some accolades and awards for their content and subject matter. I would think “how nice that would be to be recognized for some of my work, that perhaps my writing can make a difference in someone’s life”. Maybe someday that will happen, and even though I believe that we should all impact one another’s life for the better, I am not purposefully trying to achieve such accolades.

I write because I enjoy it. As I have stated in “Finding My Niche”, I am not in it for the money (even thought it would be nice to be “discovered”), but rather after further consideration, I am doing it for the legacy of it all. Someday I will not be here, and with my adult children and grandchildren scattered all over the country, it would be nice to be able to give them a piece of me after I am gone.

I really don’t think that they read my stuff right now. I have the link posted on my Facebook, but they are all in their twenties, life is exciting to them and they don’t have the time to sit down and read the ramblings of “a silly old fat man” as my youngest daughter Amy calls me with affection. I’m pretty sure that my wife doesn’t read it either. But they will. They will someday want to remember what Dad had to say about this and that, and the pages will be printed out and dispersed.

Hopefully.

One can dream that the efforts of trying to be a good influence on others will someday pay off, even if I wasn’t a good influence all of the time. Not even most of the time. But when they are all gathered to pay their final respects to me, sometime in the next 40 or 50 years (I’m not going quietly) they will be sitting there thinking of all of the good things we experienced together much as I did when my dad passed in 1999.

They always say such nice things about people at their funerals, and it makes me sad to realize I'm going to miss mine by just a few days.

_{Copyright 2011 by Del Banks}