Family

I spent the majority of this past Saturday afternoon in Cumberland, MD helping to clean out my grandparents’ house. My grandmother died 3 years ago and my grandfather recently moved into a retirement community. On the drive home I was thinking about a piece I wrote in 2005 after my grandmother passed away and thought it was appropriate to post it here in memory of her.

One additional side note: in the piece I talk about my grandfather’s deteriorating health. Well, it’s 3 years later and he is healthier than he was then. Even in his late eighties, he’s as sharp and quick-tongued as ever. He’s doing well in the retirement home and can be seen relaxing on the bench in front, smoking his pipe and reading a book.

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The recent death of my grandmother, the imminent death of her sister, and the deteriorating health of my grandfather, have made me think about how death affects families. Here are some thoughts.

As the oldest generation of a family dies and leaves this world, an entire layer of history is removed from our lives. No one remembers what it was like to live through the Depression. No one knows how Aunt Catherine acted when she was a child. And as the family members that have told us these stories leave us, so do our recollections of our family’s past. With the loss of this generation, we lose a portion of our family’s history.

I have sat for hours and listened to my Grandfather tell stories of things I will never see. He stormed the beaches of Normandy. He went 10 rounds against great fighters. At 18-years-old, he spent 3 days on a cross-country train to visit his sick mother, only to find out that she died an hour before he got home. And I can never tell these tales with the accuracy and passion that fill each of his words. When he is gone, these stories will also be gone.

As a child, my Grandmother and her family crossed the Atlantic from Italy to start a new life in America. They knew struggles that I have only read about in books. She knew what it was like to actually be hungry. She knew what it was like to literally have nothing in this world but your family. These are lessons that she has taught our family, but that we can only attempt to pass on, as she would have, to future generations.

But even the passing of this eldest generation brings about renewal. Families, like all living things, regenerate. For each death, there is a birth. The family structure forces the oldest generation to take over for their parents. Each subset of the family assumes the new role to which they have naturally been assigned. Life continues, families continue.

The interesting thing about life is that we don’t completely learn from the experiences of others. We can only truly learn from our own lives. While we continue to tell stories from our family’s history, we actually teach from our own experiences. When I, one day, teach my children about the importance of family, I will not use my Grandfather’s stories. I will use my own. Each of us encounters these pieces of life and has the ability to teach from our experiences.

Most recently, the experience of watching my family move from hospitals, to nursing homes, and then to funerals has made me think about what is truly important in this world. It has made me consider what they have accomplished in this life that will remain once they are gone.

This has brought me to one conclusion: The only difference we make and the only thing that will outlive us, is the impact we have on other people’s lives. The only people that will truly remember us are our friends and families. The only thing of importance we can do is to have a positive, meaningful influence in the lives of the people we care about.

I have been taught this lesson somewhat from my own life, but mostly from the lives of the people in my family. The legacy left by my grandparents lives on in our family today. The impact and lessons they have taught me will allow me to experience and learn about life for myself, and one day pass that wisdom and influence on to the family I create. Families are continually changing and growing and, therefore, force us to change and grow as well.