Nana

Legacy is a thing of beauty. Looking back at the women that I come from, I choose to see the resilience, the resourcefulness, and the care they provided to those around them. That is what I wish to carry on. Although these women were probably far from perfect, as I am, and you are, I want to carry on what was good – the good that touched people’s lives and changed them.

I hadn’t spoken to her in months, but losing my grandmother earlier this year is changing me in ways I wasn’t expecting.

As I was united with the family to send her home, I realized that I have big shoes to fill. Hearing all the stories of Nana’s stubbornness to see her family right, struck a very familiar chord with me. I feel one with her in her great fortitude to care for her young children and anyone else that needed her. In years past, I had watched as she altered the way she spoke to each of her children to suit their individual personalities. They wouldn’t know – to them, that’s who she always was. But I saw it. She knew each child. All eleven of them. And she knew them well.

That’s the legacy I wish to carry on. One where I know the people around me well, and for whatever time I am given to them, to make them feel important and valued and loved. Not through my own strength – because that will fade very fast. But through the strength and wisdom that comes from above.

As I listened to the stories around me, I realized that, no matter how sassy she was, or how stubborn, what people valued most about Nana, was that she opened her arms and her heart to everyone no matter her resources. Come to think of it, my paternal grandmother was the same. There’s something of Eternity in that. Something that will have a lasting effect on many. As it does on me.

I have a great legacy. Large shoes to fill. And i’m up to the challenge.

Let the legacy grow.

Let the legacy continue.

So that my children may someday say and do the same and more.