Legacy

There was a time, some years ago, when I came to hate this word.  Loathe it.  Despise it like no other word in the English language.

You see, I was on the "purchased" end of a corporate acquisition, and the term "legacy" was used to describe which company you came from - we'll call them Legacy X for the acquiring company, and Legacy Y for the us, the acquired.

Whenever (almost) everybody from Legacy X found out that you were a Legacy Y employee, you could hear the disdain creep into their voice and see a corner of their mouth curl into a sneer.  We were the vanquished, and we were to be kept in our place both literally and figuratively.  I got so tired of it that, when asked, I would respond - "I am a Company X employee, as are you.  Does it really matter where we come from - we work for the same company now, don't we?"

But, as I realized earlier this week, I had held onto that hatred of that word even though it had been used in an entirely different, and entirely more pleasantly meaningful context, since then.  As it turns out, I had let it negatively affect a part of my life that it shouldn't have, and have since not realized or appreciated its effect on me.

You see, over the past several years prior to my Dad's death, he had used that term to describe both me, but more directly, my son - the only direct descendant of his now, and likely ever.  While I knew what he meant and appreciated it at some level, I always kind of mentally cringed when I heard him use the word because of the prior experience.  I secretly wished he would change and use a different term, but he never did and I never made an issue of it.

For whatever reason and using whatever stream-of-consciousness method I used to get there, in the shower one morning this week, I came to fully realize what he was saying, to let go of the hatred of the word, and begin to think through and understand - really consider and understand - the implications.

Mom and her sister had a total of 4 boys.  Of those, only my wife and I had a child to carry on any bit of that side of the family.  While my brother could theoretically still have a child, from a realistic perspective I put that chance at 0.  So on that side of the family, he truly is the legacy.

Dad had one sister who was 17 years his senior, and they were never close - and there are other mitigating factors, which will not be discussed at this time.  She had a son (who died fairly young due to a medical condition) and a daughter, who has two sons of her own.  While we have maintained contact, we have never been very close.  And Dad never viewed them as much as family as others in his life.

So Sparky really is a "Legacy" for our family - on many levels.  Unexpectedly, I have come to consider and accept that fact in ways I didn't expect.

Peeling the onion some more.  How long will this take??  (Have I said that I can be a very impatient person sometimes??????)