Carrying a mother’s legacy into theworld
My mom died a couple of Sundays ago. She was 82 and she had spent the last five or six years on a long slide into dementia. Everyone who lives under dementia’s dominion experiences something different. Some are sweet, some are frustrated, and some are angry. Mom was defiant at first. Then she was angry for a long time, and then she got kind of sweet.
Of course her sweetness emerged after it became necessary for us to explain to her who we are and how she knew us. She eventually remembered us, but mostly she remembered my wife — accompanied by a big grin.
Cassie — 1
Brian — 0
Mom’s physical health declined significantly during the past year, and she really began to slip away since March, when COVID-19 protocols precluded our visits. I have one sibling, a brother named Steve. A couple of years ago we movedmom from our hometown to Pleasanton, near Steve’s home in the East Bay, when it became clear that we could no longer help her unless she lived close to one of us. That was a good move and, it turns out, we did it at just the right time.
I’ve been thinking a lot about legacies since mom’s death. Steve and I no longer have parents and that means we are now the stewards of any Faith family legacy. What is mom’s legacy? I now understand that Mom’s legacy is inexorably tied to our dad’s legacy.
He was the rudder on the ship that was our family andmomwas the sail. When dad died 18 years ago mom sort of lost her way. She never quite got the hang of sailing without him. She had this tendency to just follow the wind. We all grieved — dad was a very good man — butmom never recovered from her rudderless grief.
Dad was well respected in our little town. He was a machinist by trade. He showed up to work every day for more than 40 years, did his job well, and earned the respect of just about everyone he met. It’s no wonder mom couldn’t figure out how to thrive without him.
Dad’s legacy to our family is his example of humble self-awareness. He knew who he was, and who he wasn’t. He worked for the Department of Defense helping really smart people design and build machines and weapons the world had quite literally never seen or conceived of before. He resisted promotions that would have taken him away from working with his hands and hismind. At his retirement party, one of the physicists dad worked with — a guy who was busy inventing the kind of lasers that could burn through non-combustible materials — said that he and the other physicists in their group could not have done what they did without dad’s precise work and his innovative ways to design and build the parts that would give life to their theoretical ideas.
I guess the true Faith family legacy is more like an exhortation to be who we are, keep our lives as simple as possible, and to try to find ways to help others. Mom kept this legacy alive by making sure that everyone remembered how special dad was. That’s the only option she knew. It’s all she had left.
Steve summed this up in a text thread shared with our two families — including Steve and Colleen’s two adult boys and our three boys. We were reflecting on our experiences over the past few years and he wrote: “Could you even imagine if we were a family that didn’t get along or couldn’t agree on how to help her? Boys, remember you’re family and always have each other…You five have a special connection we hope you all appreciate.”
Yeah, what he said. I’d like to add that we know who we are, we know who we aren’t, we do our best to keep life as simple as possible, and we try to find ways to help others be who they are. That is our parents’ legacy. Now it is ours and that is what we carry forth into this world.
Godspeed mom, you have your reward.