LEGACIES OF THE PAST

What once was, was. Ah, don’t you see?
That’s the comfort and the curse left to you and me.

Memories are among the rich legacies of our past. The joy of love we knew softens us and makes us human. The imprint of grief opens our hearts to understanding. The realization of our dreams, gives us faith in the future.

Memories foster the birth of empathy. When I have wept for the loss of someone I loved I can more fully share your grief over the loss of one you loved. If I have agonized over whether the time has come when I must euthanize a beloved pet, I can truly understand your pain if you must decide whether to do the same thing. When love has set my own heart aflame, I can more deeply share your joy at finding your soul mate. Because I have made mistakes of my own, I can more easily brush aside your mistakes. The young do not forgive easily.

Memories are the comfort left to us by the past.

I remember the thrill of school letting out for the summer and rushing home to go on a picnic with Mom and Dad. I can still taste the fried chicken and chocolate cake.
I remember school carnivals and dressing like a ballerina at Halloween, and waking up on Christmas mornings to brightly wrapped packages. I remember childhood, when all of my world was beautiful and bright and filled with love.

I remember, sitting with my first boyfriend in the porch swing on a summer night, when kisses were new and innocent and sweet. I remember other loves, which did not last, but which I will treasure always. Much later, I remember the man I ached to be with forever saying, “Marry me.” I have loved and been loved.

I have laughed until my sides ached. I have played with the joy of a child. I have read great books, and thrilled to the music of Mozart and danced the tango. I have seen beauty that took my breath away in the great art galleries of the world.

I have traveled. I remember Paris ablaze with lights as night came and I sailed down the Seine, sipping champagne. And gazing in awe at the Parthenon on that lonely hill in Athens, so overwhelmed I could not speak. And trading with Berbers in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco, relishing the slight feeling of danger. And experiencing the magnetic pull of the Matterhorn as I looked upward from the valley below. And staring at the Phoenix in Cairo, chilled by its mystery.

Now as I sit in my chair, no longer able to go running around the world, dancing with gypsies or bargaining with a merchant in Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar, the coldness of age is warmed by all of those memories. They are mine, and I hold them close, time’s only gift to keep.

But the past’s legacy of memories is not only a comfort; it is a curse. I remember times when I wept until I had no more tears.

On the day my mother died, helplessness and panic and despair flooded over me, and when I recall that awful day, the same feelings return.

Memories I can not escape haunt me. Remembering those moments has sometimes brought regret that threatened to level me. I remember affairs that should never have been and the pain they caused. I came to understand that nothing could undo what had been done.

Times I should have been brave or kind or loving and was not linger in my heart. Words I said and never tried to take back and words I failed to say live on with the silence that followed them. Such memories are the curse of the past that we acknowledge and must live with, because they are part of us.

Blessings are among the legacies of the past.

I was blessed by being Mom and Dad’s child. They remain the two most decent people I’ve ever known. They graced my days with kindness and courage and taught me the meaning of unconditional love. Their integrity was unimpeachable and, though we had few material riches, the warmth of our time together poured over me like sunshine.

My husband has shown me what being married is about. We are survivors of rough spots, who know one another better than we know anyone else and better than anyone else knows us. We don’t just love each other, we like each other, too, and his is the opinion I respect above all others. Whatever is good in my life is not complete until I share it with him, and whatever is bad is better if he is there to hold my hand. I hope the last thing I see in my life is his face.

One of my husband’s generous gifts is sharing his children with me. Though not born of my body, they are the children of my heart. My life would have been far less without them. I would have had less fun, less joy, fewer tears and fewer sleepless nights of worrying. And certainly less love.

Friends have blessed my days, often for a season, but sometimes, for decades. Sharing goals and secrets, laughter and pain, they have accepted me, encouraged me, strengthened me and helped to open my eyes and my heart.

I dreamed of becoming a lawyer, and used to pray not to die before I fulfilled that dream. I was blessed to be able to spend my days at the work I loved. I remember, after years of following the difficult path to the dream, pride swelling within me when I raised my hand and took my oath as an attorney. I remember my first case and my last, and the quiet satisfaction of believing that I had done my job well, and that the lives of those I had served were better for my having been there. I became the judge of a juvenile court before finishing my career. The law gave me purpose, and believing that I was helping others made me feel I was earning my space on our planet.

Small blessings, thousands of them all around me, have added flavor and smiles to my life: the tender sweet green of Spring’s first leaves, the steaming cup of hot chocolate on a cold winter night, the song of the mocking bird that visits early each summer morning, the return of football season, when I can cheer my heart out for the Dallas Cowboys, Christmas morning, with all of its anticipation and hope.

The past carries a legacy of loss.

I’ve lost people I liked, who moved or died or drifted away, and people I loved, without whom life can never be the same. I’ve seen dreams slip away, never to come true. And I have lost so many beloved animals.

The first loss I remember was a little black puppy named Zipper, who used to wait, all wiggles, at the top of the stairs when I came home from school. I was eight. One day, I hurried home and he was gone, taken away and killed, because he had scratched the girl next door when we were playing. Some losses over the years were like pin pricks, soon forgotten. Others lodged in my soul. They became bearable sorrows, but they will never disappear. The thing about losses is, they compound. When I touch the memory of a loss that mattered, my heart cries out, not for that loss only, but for all the losses, even for Zipper.

Another legacy of the past is change, to which I have been a witness and a party. The world is different than when I was born seventy-five years ago.

Medical discoveries have extended and improved life. Without my pacemaker and the medication that keeps my body functioning, I would have moved on long ago. I remember polio being a dread disease, for which there was no cure, and I knew people it killed. Cancer imposed an almost certain death sentence. It meant that for my mother in 1968, but with new treatments and medications, others I love have become cancer survivors. I had pneumonia when I was sixteen and was gravely ill. Acromycin had just been developed, and it saved my life.

Transportation has changed. I’ve seen sunrise on the Alps and Big Ben striking midnight on New Year's Eve. I’ve sailed down the Nile past the great monuments that Cleopatra showed Julius Caesar and have sat in a marketplace where Socrates taught. I’ve run my hands across the stones of the pyramids and been kissed in a Venetian gondola beneath The Bridge of Sighs. Those experiences would have been impossible in the early years of my life. International flights became common only after World War II. While jetting around the world became unremarkable for me, less than a century earlier, my father traveled for weeks through Indian Territory in a covered wagon to get from Missouri to Texas.

Advances in technology since I was a child have brought us to the point where nothing seems impossible, only beyond our present capabilities. I’m curious about whether today’s child still experiences wonder.

I grew up with a telephone that had a receiver on a hook and a party line. Only a major event justified a long distance call. The revolution in communication allows us to carry in our pockets the ability to talk with or email anyone, anywhere in the world. I’m not convinced the ubiquitous presence of cell phones is a change for the better.

Computers bring us information and foster interaction with the world that boggles the mind and would have been unimaginable half a century ago. I remember when huge computers took up an entire room and no one had any thought of an individual owning one. Now I depend on mine daily, though I’m still convinced it is an instrument of the devil and curse it regularly.

My grandmother folded her arms across her chest and announced that God would never permit man to set foot on the moon. Nevertheless, I saw Neil Armstrong take that “one small step for man and one giant leap for mankind.” Now, we have landed robot vehicles on Mars and shot a telescope millions of miles into space to send back pictures of far distant worlds.

I saw my first TV in a high school class, and never dreamed I might actually own one some day. Today a TV sits in every room of the house except the bathroom, and that may be next.

Changes in attitudes toward women have opened the door to possibilities that were nonexistent when I was a child. Though my male classmates needed my help with their home work, they were expected to grow up and become doctors, lawyers or businessmen, while I was supposed to marry and have a family. If I didn't marry, I might become a teacher, a secretary or a nurse, but really shouldn't entertain thoughts of any other sort of work. I never even wondered why.

I was in my twenties before I realized I could aim for any career I chose. It was only about the time I became a lawyer that women were permitted to sit on juries. I was one of six women in my large law school, and even judges, before whom I appeared to try a case, called me "Hon" and asked what I was doing there. The idea of a woman judge was unthinkable, but changes came, and one day I found myself in a robe, sitting on the bench. Few jobs remain closed to women, though they may still have to work harder than men to land them and may earn less than their male counterparts. Perhaps one day we’ll see a woman president. At least no one laughs at the idea.

Attitudes have changed toward people of other races. I remember when blacks sat at the rear of the bus, had to use separate rest rooms and water fountains and couldn’t eat in white restaurants or attend white schools. I remember when it was a crime for a white and a black to marry. I remember taking a black friend to lunch and being turned away at the restaurant door. I cried because I was so angry and so hurt for her, but she told me not to worry, because she was used to such rejection. Today, I could walk into any restaurant with her, and we would be greeted with smiles.

Until I was grown, I thought the term “gay” just meant a person was “merry.” Homosexuality was hidden and considered by most to be a major sin. Today, there is far greater acceptance of people with a different sexual orientation. Gay partners are still denied rights that married couples enjoy concerning property, employment benefits, and decision-making for an ill or deceased partner. But there has been movement in that direction.

In my childhood, actions were right or wrong, and most people agreed which were which. People were good or bad. In the movies you could always tell the good guys, because they wore white hats. Today the good guys are not so easy to spot. We live in a complex world, no longer always black or white, but colored by shades of gray, and it has made us more cynical, but less judgmental.

When I was a child, we didn't bother to lock our door, because we couldn’t imagine that anyone would come in to rob or hurt us. Besides, our neighbors might be offended if they couldn't borrow a couple of eggs while we were away. My folks sent me out for Trick or Treat on Halloween without worrying that someone might put needles in apples or poison in candy they gave me. Today we must be far more cautious, for experience has taught us it is a dangerous world.

The extent of my knowledge of drugs when I was a little girl was mother telling me I must never accept a "reefer" from anyone. The term had no meaning to me, though I resolved to carefully avoid it, whatever it was. No one I knew had any connection with drugs or would even have recognized what they were if they had seen them. Today, we have babies born addicted to cocaine, and children as young as three, (yes, I do mean three,) dealing crack, and any child who wants drugs can easily find them.

I remember when everyone believed in our government. We were certain our leaders were good, capable men, who would never lie to us. That has changed. Perhaps we were naive, probably we were gullible. But it was a wonderful feeling to be proud of what our country was doing, to be certain we would not fight wars unless we had no other choice and it was the right thing to do. We took for granted that people throughout the world would always look to us as the highest and best example of what a nation should be. Today we are not always viewed in that light.

The worst change, the one that left me in tears on and off for weeks, came on 9/11/2001. The loss of life in the attack was horrific, but I soon realized it was not that alone for which I grieved, rather it was the fact that the world we had known was gone, and it would never return. It had been a more light-hearted and trusting world. We felt safe in our own country. After 9/11, we realized if that had ever been true, it was true no longer. Terrorists can strike wherever we are, at any time, without warning. Vast numbers of other human beings hate us so much they want to kill us, even our children, simply because we are Americans. They are willing to die to do so. What’s more, they have unprecedented access to us.

Those are overwhelming facts to face, and they have changed the world we live in. Can I fly without wondering if a terrorist has planted a bomb on the plane? Can you attend a Cowboys game without wondering if some terrorist will explode a dirty bomb in the stadium? We have learned to get on with our lives, but our world, and we ourselves, are different. Our children’s children will never know the sense of safety we once enjoyed, never enjoy the world we knew, and that breaks my heart.

Like the world of which they are a part, places change. They don't die as people do, but they change so that they no longer exist as you knew them. It had been decades since I visited the house on Fourteenth Street where I grew up. I was happy there with my parents, and my memories are warm ones. The first time I returned, the passing seasons had left the house dingy and run-down. I hoped for some hint of a lingering presence of those I loved who had lived there with me, but there was none. The next time I returned, the house had been demolished, and a playground occupied the space where it had stood. No one passing by would even know it had once existed, or that people had celebrated holidays and eaten dinner and listened to the radio and loved one another there. The home I cherished is now only a memory. Change happens. Nothing is forever.

Time has changed how others view me.

When I was working, others needed and depended upon me. When I retired, they and the work with which I was involved moved forward, leaving me simply a person who once did what I did. Sometimes I feel invisible, irrelevant. People occasionally address me in the same tone they use with a five-year-old. Waitresses call me “young lady” and don’t even realize they are patronizing me. Doctors pat me on the shoulder and seem to feel that my physical complaints are simply a result of aging, and if not, well, no big deal. I’ve already lived a long time.

I have accepted changes in myself. Once I modeled in a bikini for art classes. Now parts of my body sag, other parts bulge, wrinkles mark my face, and my hair has turned gray. I don’t relish those changes, but they matter less to me than I would have expected. Yet the internal changes are even greater. Sometimes I must think a bit longer to recall a word or a name. Nevertheless, I like some of those internal changes. They are a result of another legacy of the past, perspective. Emerging from the passage of time and life’s experiences, perspective brings bountiful gifts. Understanding what was once beyond understanding becomes easier when years intervene and perspective develops. Forgetting becomes possible when pain lessens and life moves on. Time works its magic

Perspective has shown me what matters and what is merely excess baggage. I’ve discovered what things I no longer want or need and am releasing them. Hurt, anger, and disappointments from the past are too heavy to continue to carry. I needed to forgive myself for much more than I needed to forgive others, and I have learned to do both.

Perspective exposes material things for what they are: things. Their possession has nothing to do with who I am or even with whether I’m happy. Unless I use something regularly or it has great sentimental value or is just too beautiful to let go, it’s a burden, not an asset, and I can't wait to be rid of it. Things can create demands upon their owner without providing any meaningful return, and sometimes the only end they serve is impressing others. I want what I need for my husband and me to be comfortable, nothing more.

Perspective has allowed me recognize what is real. It has shown me that true love is more than deep kisses and fun and games. It is when my husband stays home from a reunion he had looked forward to attending because he thinks I need him with me. It is when you look at one another and still hear the music, long after the dance has ended. It is when you define home by where he is.

Perspective reveals who is a real friend. When I am ill, she doesn’t say, “Call me if you need something.” She appears at my door with hot soup and a trashy novel. When our situations change, she doesn’t, but is still there in the same old ways, even when I no longer have anything to give but my love. She knows my faults and my weaknesses, and my secrets, but she never betrays those vulnerabilities, and she tells me the truth.

Perspective has shown me that things are what they are. Once I dreamed of becoming a famous actress, but remembering that now, I smile. As people change, dreams fade away. My physical limitations will prevent my ever dancing again or walking the streets of Paris or browsing through a flea market. That is my reality. No matter. I have done those things. I own those memories, and that is enough.

Another legacy of the past is the lessons that only many years of living can teach.

For me, some were major lessons, hard to learn, like you can't fix anyone but yourself;
And what once was will forever have been; you can't rewrite the script, no matter how deep your regret or fervent your desire to change what is past; and if you keep doing the same thing over and over, you’re almost certain to get the same result. And happiness comes not from having what you want, but wanting what you have.

Some were little lessons, like if you wake up at night and need to use the bathroom, you might as well get up, because it isn't going to get any better.

Most of all, the past has taught me how much I do not know.

I do know: Love matters more than anything. From whatever source it comes to you, from lover, family, friend or pet, treasure it. And I do know that each love is different. One love may last for a season, produced by mutual needs, that disappear, along with the feelings they inspired. But love need not last forever or be the greatest you have ever known to have value.

And I do know that time is everyone's most important possession. I do know that, despite my flaws, I am a worth-while human being., deserving of love. I do know that integrity is so important that nothing one accomplishes has meaning without it. And I do know in the end, hurting someone else will cause you more pain than you inflicted; and I do know that family and friends are treasures to be cherished and treated with loving kindness; and I do know that in choosing a career you must follow your passion. And I do know when you marry it must be to someone you love, someone you respect, someone you can’t wait to talk with and share with, and you’d better have a healthy lust for him, too. And I do know that to be whole, you have to love and be loved, but if you must choose between the two, loving another is more necessary for the health of your soul.

I know that God is, that I am His child and He loves me. I know He loves everyone else, too, and we are all connected. I don't have to understand more about Him than that. I trust Him to hold me close within His heart. Loving and being loved is the best part of us, and it is our link to Him.

My life is a gift, a blessing, and maybe it’s the legacies of the past that made me realize I have been among the luckiest of women. I am old now. It’s part of the plan, and I accept it. I’m simply living through the same stage that my parents and so many others I loved experienced before me. Aging, even dying, are not tragedies. The tragedy would be to die without ever having feasted at life’s table, sampling it all. I’ve been there and done that. I strongly believe this is only the beginning and the best is yet to come. After all, our continuing to be is far less miraculous than the fact that we are here to begin with.