Legacy: What Gets Swept Up

Daily writing prompt

What is the legacy you want to leave behind?

View all responses

She was good to her dogs. She could type really fast. She made her bed every day.

I think legacy is whatever crumbs you left on the table after you died, which shirts were the most worn, whether you ever ate the fancy salmon in the downstairs freezer. It’s the conversation in the car that you forgot but stays etched in a child’s adult mind, mistakes you stuffed in the bottom drawer.

She showed up to things. She picked up the tab. She wrote a lot of things.

I think legacy is how you acted when something bad happened, whether you blamed other people or yourself, if you answered the phone when it rang. It’s jewelry on the dresser, the pieces you kept but never wore because they were too expensive or too valuable, your mother’s locket, for instance, legacy is how you protected it from your own carelessness and kept it in a box to hand off to your daughter.

She was married a long time. She was impulsive. Work made her comfortable and happy. Worthwhile.

I think legacy falls off of people when they aren’t looking, that it can’t be planned or engineered. There is no predicting one’s legacy, people will remember what they will, take what part of you had meaning, like your blue sweater or the wooden carving of a woman and her dog, the love of all the places, the windows, and roads, the scraps of what’s left, what gets swept up and put in people’s pockets.

__________

Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash