Last year, my mother called me to relay the news that a man she had been with during my early school years had passed away. No mention of surviving family, no friends, just a cold obituary entry in a township announcement.
I could call the man my stepfather and I’ll do that in this post – just out of a professional courtesy.
The thing is, there were fault lines that made it almost impossible to fully confer that designation.
This isn’t an indictment on his character. To be clear, there was good in him. But it was overwhelmed by insidious factors that ultimately negated and foiled his plans to have a life with my mother. Further, he and I found ourselves on opposite sides of almost everything.
Notice how I can’t really say anything solid about him? It’s all visibly gray-ish, a mixture of charity and sanitary-medical-glove formality. Should that be the total judgement on a person’s life? I don’t know how I would feel if, after I died, those were the only emotions associated with what my presence meant.
Well, that’s what leads me to my answer for this prompt.
When I die, I want my legacy in this world to be CLEAR.
I want my closest to say I was a force for good with them, I want some (who deserve it) to say I was a total sh*thead to them, and I want the rest to not know enough to make an informed judgement.
What I don’t want, as it pertains to my legacy, is people saying that it was “complicated”. Because to me, that means I neither gave the people I love the affection they deserved, and I didn’t enforce my boundaries with people that should not have a place in my life. And further, I made myself too visible and my time too accessible to too many people that ultimately were irrelevant to my life’s personal mission.
As for my…stepfather. It’s my wish that, should he want another crack at life, he lands in a good spot where the pains in his old life are replaced by a sense of security and love.
I don’t want a “complicated” legacy. I want a clear one.
Whatever it is.
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