Legacies

Harold and Maude is one of my favorite movies. 

This weekend, it felt as if I was IN the movie... going from funeral to funeral - one Saturday and one Sunday. Plus another coming up for our dear Dr. Fleiss. What a mensch he was! 

The two services I attended over the weekend had lovely food, delightful people, and illustrative slide shows. Both were for long-lived ladies, with measuring stick histories, which cause me to review my life thus far. What IS the legacy I’m leaving?

One of these gals was most concerned, in her later years, with supporting food banks. Her idea was that no one should go hungry. She raised three beautiful, loving, and productive children, all of whom are doing good things on the planet.

The other, who had longer to do good things, because she lived to be 100 years and 41 days, hosted the Democratic Club meetings in Echo Park, as did my own mom. Her two sons, both successful artists, have made names for themselves in their chosen careers. What I learned, during the slide show of photos and through word pictures painted by relatives and friends, is that she was happiest when she was in nature, or talking with people at the shop she founded with one of the sons. The Soap Plant, now known as Whacko, is nearly as iconic as I view its founder Barbara Shire.

What will my legacy be?

Former dancer, tutor, nursery school teacher, yoga and meditation instructor, who became a body-worker - just so I could figure out how touch could be helpful to my Gram when she came out of triple bi-pass surgery... where does it all lead.

I continued studying whatever modality of bodywork seemed to help me on my own healing journey. Is it wrong that each of my clients became a “Guinea Pig” as I navigated my way from novice to adept (enough) in wielding each tool? For their patience with me, I am grateful. That’s why I call what I do a bodywork PRACTICE... I’m always practicing.

Who knows what my legacy will be? What will my eulogy be?

Good friend, perhaps? Singer, writer-of-songs who still played guitar badly even at the end of her life? Volunteer camp counselor? A Gra'Moose who loved her granddaughter soooo much?

On a recent visit with my older daughter, we let our hair down with each other, and she told me how much she appreciated my telling  her and her sister just enough of what was going on when memories of my early childhood, that I had  suppressed, came flooding back when I was in my forties. I thought I was going crazy, in someone else’s movie, having someone else’s flash-backs, and having terrible somatic symptoms. I remember reassuring my daughters, then ten and fourteen, that I was doing some healing work, and that it wouldn’t last forever, and that all would be well. 

My daughter told me it was useful role modeling for how to deal with what life hands us. Again, I’m grateful… both that I had the resources to heal, and that I think it’s the best thing to model for our children... that there is nothing so big that we cannot face it together, and that healing is possible.

The fact that one of these ladies whose lives we celebrated over the weekend smoked for many years of her life and still lived to a ripe old age, is reassuring. Of course, neither of them grew up in Los Angeles, Valley of Many Smokes, which, I’ve been told is tantamount to smoking a pack a day. Oy! I’d better work on my legacy... I might not have as long as I think!