When we were in Denmark last year, I wrote the following entry in a journal on August 30 (in the 3rd person for some reason): He wonders what would happen if he died suddenly. Not just him. But his wife, son, and daughter. Lives lost too soon. They had been vacationing in Denmark, seeing castles of past kings. Fredericks and Christians. Huge structures. Rooms after rooms with histories each their own. Walking through the ball room, he considers who may have dined there once. What people said to one another when dancing. Did the kings know that someday their palace would be a tourist attraction? If they died then and there, would anyone want to visit their home hundreds of years later. What would his legacy be left behind? The thought disappointed him.
I also wrote a similar thought on September 5, 2008 (while at Palatine Hill in Rome):
Vast structure. What will you do with your life to make people want to visit your childhood home?
I often think about this kind of thing. Legacy. I had this conversation with my cousin, Greg, once. He is exactly three months, to the day, younger than me. We've been pretty close most of our lives. We had Greg and his wife Ceciel over for dinner one night, and he and I were heading over to a Mandarin restaurant to pick up our dinner. Greg and I have similar interests. We recommend books and movies to each other, attend readings together, are subscribers to Steppenwolf together and have been for years, and we have intense conversations at times. This was one of them.
I have grappled with the concept of death all of my life. People know this about me. I've written about it before. I'm not sure how we got on the subject, but I seem to recall it was a period of my life were I may have been in a mild depression. When that happens, I immediately go to death. My death, and what life would be like without me. My death, and why we are born into the world only to die. I have religious beliefs, but this is something I continue to struggle with and that night was no different. Except it was on the surface and I wanted to talk about it. With Greg.
Greg's a pretty existential kind of guy, in my opinion. Some might also say cultured. He's mild mannered and sensitive to people's differences, preferring not to necessarily engage in a heated debate, when possible. Which is why I enjoy talking with him.
What I remember about the conversation is that Greg said these words to me, "maybe we are put here to provide some kind of legacy." I asked for who. "For our friends, for our family, for our children. We provide our life so the people we encounter can benefit from it. We make each other better people, especially our children, if we live our life right." But what does "right" mean, wondered then, and now.
While I understand the capitalistic sense behind turning the home of a once royal family into a museum, or enticing people to travel far to see the home of Hans Christian Andersen, it only makes me sad to think about my own legacy. Not that I need people to want to flock to any of my life's homes, but I often think about what legacy I am leaving to my children. I want them to be better than me, every parent does. But if I am their main role model, does this mean since, in the 39 years I've been around my legacy is not "discovered"/ "mainstream" that I have failed?
On this trip to Denmark and Italy, I kept asking my kids what they were going to do in their lives to make people want to visit their childhood home. Maybe that's too much pressure. Or maybe I should continue to ask myself the same question, until I find a suitable answer.
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